Today’s find: Slip ‘n Slide

Sometimes life comes at you like a fire hose.

Or a garden hose, anyway. 

A garden hose … attached to a Slip ‘n Slide.

You’re trying hard to chill … and enjoy a suitable-for-summer “retirement” vibe. But things keep getting added to the calendar, and before you know it there’s an appointment (or two) to keep every dang day of the week.

‘How did I ever find time to work?’ I tend to wonder at times like these.

And right about then, my heart turns to wonder: God-incidences start poking out here and there and everywhere, almost as if the Holy One is putting in overtime just trying to get my attention.

It happened at a cemetery the other day – where about three dozen folks gathered under a blazing summer sun to lay my dear uncle to rest. It was a remarkable sight, really: an actual factual crowd gathered to pay tribute to a man who died at 92. You’d expect to see a just handful there in other cases, for other men who’d outlived most of their friends and family. But Uncle Larry was blessed – as most of us in that cemetery crowd are – to be part of a huge and loving extended family. God’s grace showered upon us like a cloudburst, not just that day … but for all the decades of a very full life that preceded it.

It happened in my back yard this week, too – when we rolled out the Slip ‘n Slide for the Grandsons as part of their jam-packed sleepover agenda. Just attach a garden hose, and let the good times flow … and flow … and flow. It didn’t take long for my drought-parched turf to turn into a bit of a mud-bog. And for my heart to turn to gratitude – for being able to live in a place where water is abundant, so plentiful and profuse that we don’t think twice about just letting it spray prodigally in our faces.

Those were a couple of the good times this past week. There were some bad ones, too, uncomfortable moments that had me wondering whether perhaps God had abandoned me, turned away and taken all that grace from our midst.

But that’s a wonder too, isn’t it? The notion that it all belongs. It’s all part of the kingdom we are called to help the Holy One build – the good and the bad. Slip ‘n Slide. 

And what better patrons could we have than Peter and Paul to teach us this truth about God’s continued presence in our midst? We tend to think of these two saints as pillars of the early church. But they were pillars fashioned from  troubled timbers, as one scripture commentator puts it – men who were anything but perfect in their efforts to serve the Lord.

Maybe that’s something to keep in mind, especially when life seems to be coming atcha like a fire hose. You can’t always expect “perfect” to be part of the picture. But you can count on “grace” to flow … from delightful and unusual places.

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS