When Monday turns to Liquid

I don't even know how it came up.

Following a restful afternoon with books, bike rides, naps, and games we gathered round the heavy wood table, bowed our heads, gave thanks to God for his abundance and began feasting.

Conversation ebbed and flowed, often the table is divided, little kids down by Weekend Farmer Husband talking about horses, play in the swimming pool, and the big kids down by me, new videos on YouTube, friends, work, and me just trying to keep up with it all.

Then the one whose middle name means "Pearl", and whose very name reminds me that my treasure is not of this earth, rather my riches lie with the King of Kings who will make all things new, asks a hard question.

"Who were the Nazis?"

And for once, the table talk stills.

Weekend Farmer Husband pauses, considers who asked the question and who's listening, and does a masterful job of creating a simile. A Nazi is like....

She nods her head.  Gets it.

Conversation lingers on the airstrip, and just as it's readying to take off, I call out for it to stop.  We need to linger here.  More needs to be told.  Although they should not yet need to carry the weight of the whole truth, it's time for them to learn to think more complex thoughts about what it means that there even are Nazis, how scarred human history is by yet another of our atrocities, and how unless we learn from history we are compelled to repeat it.

Firstborn son, with a teacher's heart and deep reservoirs of history, leads his younger sisters gently into new places of knowing, greater understanding, and satisfied curiosity without revealing the making of nightmares.

Humming again, conversation rises and falls, the family table comes to a close, and soon the youngest are being tucked in, and I'm singing what I sing each evening and telling Truth to them as our final words of the day.

Neither of the littles likes to fall asleep in the dark.  So I turn the same light on each night, and as I do so I give the benediction to their day.

"This light reminds us, girls, that Jesus is the light of the world, and NOTHING can separate us from His love."

Settled, they each reach for a book and read until slumber comes.  I return before slipping between my own sheets to usher darkness into the room.  All is well.  Peace is on us.

By the next morning I barely remember what happened not 12 hours earlier.  It's not that I can't.  It's that I don't.  I'm well into reviewing what must be done, setting up tasks, steeling myself for the day, replacing a wayward kitten back outdoors, inwardly groaning but smiling when the youngest gets up quite a bit too early. Frankly, I've failed in the discipline of taking time to remember the gospel and what it means today.  What it means for all of history.

Oh friend, how careless I am.

But, even more, how good He is.

Lunch is late today.  It affords a small opportunity for me to sneak away and check in on one of my "must read" blogs.

And I am undone.

Although I was already planning to chronicle gifts here today I am again stunned by my history.  Of a man who died in my place.  And the gift of His life for mine really is the whole of my list.

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Consider, won't you please, clicking on this and reading along with me what made thanksgiving, contrition, and joy run liquid down my cheeks in the middle of this regular Monday?  It will help make so much more of my small words above.

And as for the gifts, the many I enjoy and the ones I think to chronicle just this:

"It is enough that Jesus died, and that He died for me."