There's Beauty in the Bellow

I won a Persian rug off eBay. It arrived a week before Hurricane Michael hit the Florida coast -- only 50 miles east of us. As I cleaned up our little house, two truths lay before me in tension. The first is simply this: do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust and mold destroy, where thieves break in and steal, and where hurricanes ravage. The second is that the good man lays up an inheritance for his children's children. My momma has a Persian rug that her grandparents bought through the Sears and Roebuck catalogue when they married. She remembers dancing on that rug as a child, and I danced on that rug ... picking out step patterns by choosing which geometric element to step on next. So I bought a rug from the same region in hopes that my children and grandchildren will dance on it too. The rug by itself might not be that valuable. But more significantly, I hope that it becomes a tangible reminder of love. My paternal grandmother, although not a...

What does a Christian gravestone look like? Our church sits next door to a funeral home and cemetery. I wandered through the cemetery one day and was impressed by the blankness of most of the headstones. Most have merely the name and lifespan inscribed. There might be an inscription noting the branch of the military or the war that a veteran served in. Maybe a "beloved wife and mother." There was one stone for a young serviceman with the logos of his favorite pastimes/hobbies: NASCAR, a football team, the Marines, a baseball team -- a strange combination of altar and shrine, but ultimately meaningless and empty. We know that our culture fears death. We belittle the old who look and act old, who "turn in their sexy card." We hide them away in special homes. We market "anti-aging" and "life-extension". It's strange to look at the empty headstones over the remains of (let's assume) a full life. Our expectations for the after life are eq...