“Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14
The Book of Esther is a remarkable story concerning Jews dispersed throughout Persia. It comes at a time when their period of exile was coming to a close and some Jews had already returned to Jerusalem. Others chose to remain. These were undoubtedly those who had managed to carve out a decent life in a foreign country and were not being persecuted. At least not yet.
Funny thing happened to me on the way to the Catch. I was reminded of a picture book my wife, Marti, made for our granddaughter, Jocelyn. It’s about a huggable stuffed leopard we gave her named Isaac, and an imaginary story about how he watches over her while she sleeps. It seemed a fitting way to end a lighter week of reflection in these most difficult times. Here is the story.
A funny thing happened on the way to the Catch this week. I was involved in a drive-by … birthday party! It was for our daughter-in-law who turned 40 this week. Unable to arrange for the big gathering he wanted because of the virus, our son, Christopher, arranged to have a bunch of their friends gather in their cars in a parking lot a block away from their house, decorate their cars with balloons and streamers, and then drive by in front of their house like a little parade, dropping off cards and gifts for his wife, Elizabeth, as she stood curbside, greeting everyone and watching us pass on down the street honking and screaming, “Happy Birthday!”
A funny thing happened to me this time on the way to the Catch. I ran into Princess Anna of Arendelle. Not the animated version from the Disney movie, Frozen, but the real princess — the younger sister of Elsa, the Snow Queen with the magic powers. You might know that it was those powers that got Elsa and her kingdom into all kinds of trouble, but it was Anna’s determination and love that broke the spell and finally saved the day. Anna has no special powers except for the power of love, which, as we learn once again, is the greatest power in the world.
The funny thing that happened to me on the way to the Catch today makes me wonder if I want to keep this “lighten up” theme going all week for fear of what might happen the rest of the week, since what is funny seems to always come at my expense. This one my wife relishes because it came as a result of turning the dining room table into my office in the early morning — something she is not at all fond of.
This was to be the first day of something on the lighter side this week just to try and counteract all the negative news going down. Not that we want to put our heads in the sand and pretend something isn’t there when it obviously is. It’s just that this negative news is going to be around for a while, and if we lighten up for a little bit, plenty of bad news will be still waiting around for our attention when we are ready to give it.
We were playing with the not too creative title: “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Catch.” And you know, something did happen on the way to the Catch today: I overslept. On the way to the Catch this morning, I kept hitting the snooze button on my phone. They make it too easy; it’s a big orange button in the middle of my screen — easy to find; easy to hit — so that I ended up getting up a full two hours later than the time set. That was due to very late nights all weekend including last night. As you know, the pandemic is impacting many within our community, drastically changing how the Ministry operates. We are adapting as fast as we can to respond to the increasing demand for assistance as our volunteers donate increased hours of needed professional expertise in many areas and necessitating that we work all weekend, into the early morning hours.
Let’s face it, kids have it all over us adults when it comes to creativity.
One of the requisites of a creative mind is the ability to see things from a fresh perspective. This is where the kids come in. Children don’t have the realistic limits on their imaginations that adults have. They can put things together any way they want. And even though they may be outside the realm of the possible, nevertheless, unfettered imaginations can spark new approaches to tired old problems.
There is an fascinating story told in the Second book of Kings (Chapter 5) about a young Jewish girl who was taken captive by the commander of the army of the king of Aram, a neighboring country and potential enemy of the nation of Israel. The commander’s name was Naaman and the young girl lived under his roof as a servant to his wife.
Naaman was a valiant soldier, but he had contracted leprosy. Now the servant girl (we never do know her name) knew there was a prophet, Elisha, in Israel who could cure diseases. “If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria!” she told her mistress. “He would cure him of his leprosy.”
Why is it that so often I return from social converse with a spirit worn, a lack, a disappointment—even a sting of shame, as for some low, unworthy thing?
—George MacDonald
Have you noticed how these days, almost every conversation, much of social media, articles we read and many presentations we watch end up being political, one-sided, full of divisiveness, rancor, conspiracy theories, threatening rhetoric and fueled by so much fear that you walk away feeling a deep sense of unrest or as George MacDonald describes, as if you’ve been engaged in “some low, unworthy thing?” There’s so much fighting going on that it is quite tempting to jump in and take a few swings, but then how do you feel later?
One of our readers sent me this Catch this morning originally posted March 1, 2019. I’m not sure why he did, but I’m glad he did, especially as we are more aggressively building our own church now. So thank you, Ed, for drawing our attention again to looking into what’s coming.
Okay, I’ve been dancing around this most of my life, but I’m finally ready to come out with it. Blame it on my wife, Marti. She’s been saying something’s coming for some time now and I’ve been going, “Sure, sure.” But have you noticed how anyone who has either become a Christian during the Jesus Movement or experienced any kind of ministry during that time, cannot stop thinking about it? Like the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, where Richard Dreyfuss builds a model of a mountain in his living room and doesn’t know why — he just had to do it — why does the Jesus Movement sit in the living room of anyone who experienced it? This is not “ho hum, time marching on.” Nor is it just a bad case of nostalgia. No … something really happened, and something’s coming back, and you can think I’m nuts, you can humor me, or you can join me, but that’s where we’re going.
John Fischer The Catch 