Posted by: thepinetree on 10/19/2008 11:27 AM
Updated by: thepinetree on 10/19/2008 12:35 PM
Expires: 01/01/2013 12:00 AM
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D-Day ~By Mindi Bach
Angels Camp, CA...“Hurry up, mom. It’s D day,” my 4-year-old son, Sam, shouted from the door, “I want to learn letters again.” Somehow Sam had convinced me to home-school him this year, which essentially meant teaching the alphabet and turning on Disney Channel, or on days like today, heading to the park. “Donut starts with a D!” he continued. “And you promised me one after I play on the playground.” The screen door slammed and I heard his footsteps pounding toward the car...
As I turned off CNN and headed outside, I grimaced at the irony that my son had called it dead-on. It was D-day – but not because of the alphabet. Our nation had just lived through the end of the investment bank era on Wall Street, had witnessed the largest savings and loan closure in America’s history, and was waiting with bated breath to see if Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, had convinced Congress to bail out the situation with emergency legislation before world markets plunged into the abyss. All of this amidst one of the more contentious Presidential elections in a decade. “Maybe I’ll have to teach him that ‘D’ is for Dow Jones, Depression, Depreciation and Deadlock.” I mused.
Once at the park, we made our rounds to the swings and monkey bars, pointing out all objects that start with “D” along the way. A couple other little boys were playing under the slide and Sam sidled over to see if he could join in. They were clearly mesmerized by the cast on his left arm that was the result of a fall from the monkey bars a couple weeks before. As the boys were admiring all of the pictures and signatures on the cast, I settled onto a bench to check my blackberry for e-mails and to see how far south the Dow was heading today, compounding financial doom and gloom.
“Mom! Can I go play on the swings with the boys?” Sam shouted breathlessly, clearly exhilarated he had made some new friends. I love parks. They are the great equalizer of our society, where any financial, racial, social, or educational diversity devolves into a child’s common interest in playing.
“Go ahead buddy. I’ll be right here.” As they ran off in a cloud of dirt, I sat back and tried to wrap my mind around all of the massive changes going on in our world – underscored by the unmitigated layers of greed and corruption that put us here. Add to that another bombing in Pakistan, an ousted leader in South Africa, new elections in Israel, conflict in Russia and on and on. The list was overwhelming. I picked up my blackberry again. Still no announcement from congress or Paulson. As my thoughts turned to worry about our future, I heard my son raise his voice from the swing set.
“Jesus says don’t push! Hey, listen! Jesus says you shouldn’t push.” I looked over to see Sam, his face flushed in the California heat, facing his two new friends and a toddler who stood nearby. Before I could walk over and intervene, Sam continued. “Hey, listen guys. Once upon a time there was this man, Adam and a girl, Eve that lived in this garden. God told them not to eat this fruit but they didn’t obey. They did it anyway and then God put them in another garden but it wasn’t pretty like the first one…….hey, guys, listen to me.” As I watched, the boys started to walk away with quizzical looks on their faces. “Listen to me. You gotta hear this,” Sam pleaded. The boys were clearly not impressed with Sam’s story and made their way to the jungle gym. I thought of the Apostle Paul and his experience in Antioch. But instead of “wiping the dust from his feet and moving on,” my 4-year-old son with his cast gesturing to his audience of one, focused his story on the toddler. He recited, in his own words, the entire saga of original sin and its consequences. There were too many gardens and some talking animals, but he got the essential facts straight and astoundingly, made the connection between sin and pushing. “So when God says not to push people on the swings, you don’t get to,” he finished with the gusto of a young Billy Graham speaking at a tent revival in downtown L.A. His eyes rested on the toddler who was slowly sucking her pacifier. They had a bit of a stare-down until Sam startled to the sound of his friends playing on the swings. “Hey guys! Wait up.” And he was off, back to work playing.
I sat there in silence for a few moments. Suddenly it didn’t really matter what Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke, Nancy Pelosi, John McCain or Barak Obama had to say. I quietly turned off my blackberry, sat back and recalled a similar scene about 2000 years ago when “In the fifteenth year of Tiberias Caesar – when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abiliene – during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the desert.” Or in the words of Ravi Zacharias, “The word of God came to a funny-looking man, wearing funny-looking clothes, eating funny-looking food in the wilderness.” To boil it all down, amidst all those who’s who of the first century world, God spoke to a homeless guy in camel hair about whom Jesus ultimately declared, “Among those born of women there is no one greater.”
Today, in the 8th year of the Presidency of George Bush, while Asif Zardari is President of Pakistan, Jacob Zuma the new President of South Africa, Vladimir Putin the Prime Minister of Russia, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the President of Iran, while Henry Paulson is Secretary of the Treasury and Ben Bernanke the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and Rick Warren the new voice of evangelicals, the Word of the Lord came to dirty, sweaty toddlers in Sonora, California through the mouth of a 4-year-old. To boil it all down, while we waited with bated breath for a word from our congressional leadership, the word of God came through a small-town boy who hasn’t even learned to write the letter D. And if Hebrews is true, that this Word of God is “living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart;” and that “nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight; that everything is uncovered and lay bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.” – this is the word I should have been seeking on my blackberry all day. It took the halting words of little Sam to remind me Christ does not rely on big names, governments, financial systems, legislation or borders of this world to accomplish his purposes. He has chosen the “weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”
We Christians know that ultimately, we can no more legislate away greed than we can force a toddler to lose his desire to push. Sin festers in all of our hearts. We also know that our golden parachute has always been the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Maybe it’s time that we remind ourselves and our country that this is D-day. That today we have witnessed how disobedience and disbelief in the Word of God have led us on a path to destruction. And then we can joyfully proclaim that Christ’s death on our behalf has paid our debt and his resurrection is our only hope of deliverance. A Hope, unlike any coming out of Wall Street or Capitol Hill, which will never disappoint and leave us debt-free forever. And if no one sticks around to listen, or we are left with just one wide-eyed toddler with a pushing problem – we keep preaching – in season and out of season. For the Word will not return empty but will accomplish what he desires in the church.
As we rode home in our minivan – complete with a fresh layer of donut crumbs – I caught a glimpse of Sam’s broken arm in my rear-view mirror clutching a maple bar. It is amazing that this broken vessel, layered with park bacteria and maple glaze, was raised high to proclaim the Word of the Lord; once again proving that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. At a time in our world where it seems that evil has outdistanced good, Sam’s childlike faith proves that “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.” And this is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.
“Donut starts with a D,” Sam smiled, crumbs tumbling down his shirt.
“Because of your faith, Sam, it isn’t D-day anymore.”
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