Look closely, and you can see some evidence that my favorite golf course was completely submerged just a few weeks ago. But things are definitely looking up at Aberdeen today.
A Herculean effort by the superintendent and his grounds crew have all but erased the damage done by raging floodwaters of the Meramec River earlier this month.
The bunkers are still a work in progress (but hey, who doesn’t mind a free drop from a sandtrap under repair?). Overall, though, the course is in handsome shape—and stingy as ever in yielding pars or birdies. (Yielding them to me, anyway.)
It’s an impressive turnaround, even if it’s not quite complete. And it strikes me that Aberdeen’s recovery is not unlike the spiritual state of the apostles as we encounter them on the feast of the Ascension.
In Matthew’s gospel, we read:
The eleven disciples went to Galilee,
to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
The presence of the Risen Lord is experienced as a gift in their lives. But it’s not a done deal quite yet. They’re not entirely back in business.
This is a liminal space and time: There are more things…better things…to come as they continue their Easter journey. Jesus makes this promise to them in the passage we hear from the Acts of the Apostles, enjoining them:
to wait for ‘the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak…
[for] in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’
Pentecost is just over there, on the horizon. And what a game-changer the coming of the Advocate will be.
Come, Holy Spirit… bathe us in Your Light!
Come, Holy Spirit…come!
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 
Golf is a great reflection of life