In one of my devotional readings this morning, the writer asked, “What would you do if you knew Jesus would be dropping in for a visit in five minutes?” There’s not a lot anyone can do in five minutes, so I decided to think about the question a little differently. “What would I do if I knew Jesus was coming to visit me tomorrow?” The idea isn’t so far-fetched. After all, Jesus dropped in on Mary and Martha when he was traveling in their area.
I asked Mim the question after breakfast. Her first response was, “I guess I’d pick up the papers laying around the house.” Then she added, “and I’d be sure we had something to serve with coffee.” I suggested to her, “Maybe you’d bake a rhubarb coffeecake with the fresh rhubarb in the refrigerator.” She replied, “Yeah, either that or almond brownies – whichever would be quicker.”
That got me started on my own list of what I’d do today if I knew Jesus was coming for a visit tomorrow. After 45 years of living together, Mim and I think a lot alike. Our first and second items were nearly identical.
- Clean up the house as much as I can (with Mim’s help) in a couple hours. On the house decorating continuum from casual/cluttered to formal/minimalist, our home is pretty far on the left. While Mim is picking up papers, I’d pick up the dog toys scattered throughout the living room and the music lying all around the piano. Then Mim would vacuum the carpeting and I’d dust the tops of the furniture.
- Be sure we had everything needed to fix a nice dinner for Jesus. I’d probably make a quick trip to Ken’s Meat Market to get some burgundy pepper steaks to grill out on the deck, and maybe stop at MetroMarket for some fresh vegetables.
- Spend some time at my desk making a list of the most important things I want to talk with Jesus about – from Trump’s crazy behavior, to Hawaii’s volcano, to what’s going on with the jail ministry, to my sister-in-law’s health, to everything else on my mind… Once I completed the list, I’d probably have to prioritize it because it may be much too long to cover in one day.
- Spend a couple hours cleaning up my latest writing project (Talking with God Through Music) so that Jesus and I could talk about my progress and how I could improve the book.
- Make a list of people to invite to join Jesus, Mim, and me for this special visit. I’d want to keep the list small enough so that we could really talk together, but I think I should be willing to share this wonderful moment with a few friends and family members. This will probably be the hardest item on the list for me to do.
- Google “Mary and Martha.” I’d want to know everything I could about Jesus’ visits with Mary and Martha to learn from their example how to offer Jesus the best hospitality possible on earth, while at the same time taking advantage of this extraordinary opportunity for personal growth and understanding from Jesus himself.
- Finish all my preparations in time to sit down at the piano and play some hymns to center my mind on this amazing opportunity to spend time together with Jesus. Hopefully, Mim would join me and sing praises to God. Maybe, we’d still be singing when Jesus walked in the door, and he would join us.
I guess seven to-dos is as much as I could get done in one day of prep for a visit with Jesus.
What would be on your list?
Henry is one of my heroes. I knew Henry for a total of about twelve years, starting in 2000. He wasn’t a perfect person. He had one significant flaw that I knew of – not being punctual. He lived by his internal clock, not his watch. But he taught me more about forgiveness, kindness, and absolute commitment to serving God than anyone else I’ve known in my 66 years of life. (Well, maybe my mom taught me more about those values, but Henry taught me the second most of anybody.)
So Henry and Bob ended up living with us for a couple months. During that time, we became good friends. As a B&B, we always served them breakfast, but as they were becoming friends, they often ate dinner with us too. Sometimes we’d go into the living room after dinner and gather around the piano for a sing-along, especially on days when my sister Nancy and her husband Clark had also joined us for dinner.
Unfortunately, it became clear early in Henry’s time of ministry at Willerup that some members of the congregation were not pleased that Henry, a divorced, second-career pastor, was their minister. The congregation, in general, was quite conservative, and Henry and Bob didn’t fit their image of a traditional pastor and his family. Matters got worse when Bob, who spent his days at a sheltered work environment did some acting out to get more attention. Bob observed that another worker got extra attention when he told stories about his guardian being sexually inappropriate. So Bob tried to tell similar stories about Henry. Bob was right – he got lots of attention when he told these stories. A social worker and even the police got involved.
Before the auction, Mim and I talked with Henry about how hard it must be to give up most of his material possessions. We talked for a long time. He showed us some of his most treasured items that would be in the auction and told us stories about some of them. “Peter” was the name of a life-size cast iron rooster. A member of a previous congregation had given that to him as a gift because of how personally meaningful Henry had made the story of Peter’s betrayal of Jesus, of Jesus’ forgiveness of this betrayal, and of Jesus’ continuing love for Peter and for all of us.
About a year after Henry left Cambridge he got his new heart. The donor was a young man who died in a motorcycle accident. Henry’s recovery was long and hard, but he was determined to recover and continue to develop his clown ministry. He had a new focus for clowning – to comfort people who are involved in heart transplants – the families of donors, the recipients and their families, and the medical and nursing staff who work with everyone involved. He served in clown ministry for about ten years.
When I was in college, I came to the realization one day that my brother Danny had grown from a subtly rebellious teenager into a kind and caring young man. It was the day I learned that Danny had become the person that Eva could call upon for help whenever she needed strong young muscles to move something heavy, or a creative problem-solver to fix something. Danny was always there to help her. I guess Eva’s quiet presence in our lives had enriched Danny’s life as well as mine.
Floey, who will turn one on January 24, barks ferociously every time she sees her reflection – whether it’s in a mirror, in a window at night, in the shiny black refrigerator door, or in the oven window. She sees that same dog everywhere! She knows there’s a dog on the other side of that “window” and she wants her to come forward and either fight or play, or else turn around and run away. Floey just doesn’t understand why that dog doesn’t respond to her appropriately.
Putting those two thoughts together – Floey barking at her reflection and the Bible telling us to get along with each other – I thought about what my reflection is like, everywhere it’s seen. Do I reflect the image of a person who wants to get along with others so that together we can praise God?
This morning I looked at my beautiful old dog Abbey and said, “Hey, Abbey. Come over here a minute. I want to give you a pat on the back – not just a few pats on the head, a real pat on the back.”
“That’s right, Abbey. You have definitely won her over. You know what she told me the other day? She said that you really like her, that you even lay down outside her door sometimes when we’re out. She is so happy that you have become her friend.”
The word Mim chose is ENOUGH. When she told me her word choice, I seriously wondered if she really understood the concept underlying having a special word for the year. ENOUGH didn’t seem like a very inspiring word to me. But after eight months, I’m beginning to understand why Mim chose that word. What’s happened to me by Mim’s word choice is that while finding moments of JOY is the primary theme of my day-to-day living this year, the word ENOUGH has become the secondary theme. I sometimes catch myself thinking about what’s ENOUGH – enough money to pay the bills as well as think about retirement; enough food to feed everyone in our household, but not too much of anything that might spoil; enough time to get my work done, or at least the really important things on my to-do list…
Imagine my surprise when I saw that the theme of Joan Chittister’s Monastic Way pamphlet for the month of August (Mim’s birthday month) is ENOUGHNESS. The painting Chittister selected to illustrate ENOUGHNESS is A Fruit Stall by 19th century English painter, Helen Allingham. The proprietress of the fruit stand is surrounded by dozens of baskets of different kinds of fruits with some fruits piled high against a wall. A woman carrying a small basket is looking at all the fruits to make her selection.
I’ve loved eating lobster ever since. Unfortunately, there are not many opportunities to eat fresh whole lobster in Wisconsin. Last weekend we had such an opportunity. Margaret and Don, the daughter and son-in-law of one of our former assisted living residents, invited us to join them for a Lobster Fest Wisconsin Style in Mosinee, about a 2-hour-drive north of us. A group of people from their church organize a Lobster Fest every year. This year we felt honored to be among the twenty guests.
A bowl of freshly steamed mussels came next. (Mussels are Mim’s favorite shellfish, so she couldn’t be happier!) Then came the boiled lobster, corn on the cob, and boiled potatoes.
After dinner most of the guests stayed around to help with the cleanup, sort of… Margaret wanted me to see the hostess’ baby grand piano, so we went to the music room instead of the kitchen. I sat down to play the only ocean song I could think of – “Puff the Magic Dragon.” But the hostess quickly brought me a folder of sheet music from the 1930’s and 1940’s. A few guests gathered around the piano to sing and together we assumed the responsibility of entertaining the kitchen crew with our music.
There was only one thing wrong with the concert. Maybe it was a bird inside Overture Hall. Or maybe it was a bug somewhere in the organ or somewhere else in all the systems that usually work together flawlessly in modern buildings. Whatever it was, it chirped throughout the whole concert. I first heard some squeaking during the Bach piece, and I thought maybe one of the pedals squeaked. But the gremlin even had the nerve to chirp when Han was standing at the microphone introducing the next piece. Han was not distracted in the least by the chirping. She somehow managed to block it from her mind so that all of us could focus with her on the incredible music she was creating.
As I was thinking back on how wonderful this concert was, despite the “bird” in the room, I remembered another concert I attended about 30 years ago. I was living in Chicago at the time, and Mim and I had season tickets to a Sunday afternoon piano concert series in Orchestra Hall downtown. This particular concert was in the middle of winter, and at least a quarter of the people in the audience were sneezing and coughing. The pianist was Alfred Brendel, the biggest name pianist on the series that year. I don’t remember what he played, but I do remember that after the first movement, he stood up, faced the audience, and said in total seriousness, “Will everyone who is coughing, please do it now and then stop.” He walked off the stage for a few minutes, then came back, sat down at the piano, and continued the piece.
