Friday, February 26, 2021

Lent: Bless

Let me share with you three of my oldest and most golden memories.

The first is framed with the excited glow of anticipation. I was sitting in the back seat of the car and probably had been for years, but my long wait was about to end. My father had just turned the car down a country road with trees on each sides and a distant gray house on the right. That was where my Grandmother Learn was, and my two brothers and I were going to visit.

The second memory is suffused with joy. I was climbing a set of stairs made from a metal grill that you could see through to the people below. I'd never seen stairs like that before. They were wondrous, strange and new. But this was the engineering plant where my father worked, and I'd never been there before. It was a rare public tour, and my mother had taken the three of us.

The third memory comes a few months after the other two. I mostly remember a sense of wonder. It was a summer day, and I was in the upstairs of our house. My older brothers' room was off to the right, and my room was directly in front of me.

Someone had placed a crib just inside the open door, and my mother was standing up after just laying my new roommate down for a nap. Steve's been in my space ever since. (Jerk.)

We gather a lot of debris in our lives, and some of it is even fun or useful to have around for a while. But when God really wants us to bless us for this journey we're on, he sends people.

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