Saturday, May 9, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Birthdays a year later
(from May 25, 2023)
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.
Not as the world gives do I give it to you.
Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.
It was Aly’s 13th birthday. And it would soon be Melissa’s birthday too. So we sang the song, and gave our gifts, and shared cards painted by our friend Clarence Heller. We talked about Aly’s awards at her 7th grade recognition ceremony (she got 10 certificates). We also congratulated Jack for his state and national scholastic bowl awards.
Then we talked about death. What we thought could/should happen when Margaret and I died, and what our kids thought. We made copies of our wills, revocable trust, and papers about our farmland. And we at least guessed about how those documents would be useful after one or both of us passes on. We talked a bit about cemeteries and memorial services, ashes and caskets, songs to sing.
And in this way we pressed on in the present back into the past and then forward into the future. Might seem a little strange, but it did feel like a pretty good way to be an extended family, after talking, playing Tripoly, sharing a meal, looking at old photos.
Jesus and his disciples also had a conversation before he was arrested, about his death but then also about his resurrection.
You heard me tell you,
‘I am going away and I will come back to you.’
If you loved me,
you would rejoice that I am going to the Father;
for the Father is greater than I.
And now I have told you this before it happens,
so that when it happens you may believe.
We didn’t get to the resurrection piece. But we did talk a bit about our baptisms, which prefigures our resurrections after death. Each of us has memories and pictures in our minds of what our baptism day was like. I don’t have any way to remember the day of my birth, even if those memories are stored somewhere in my subconscious. Same for my baptism as a baby Lutheran. But later, on Easter Sunday 1979, I remember my second baptism. What a day.
The angel took me in spirit to a great, high mountain
and showed me the holy city Jerusalem
coming down out of heaven from God.
It gleamed with the splendor of God.
Our conversation quieted after awhile, and we watched Terrance Shannon, Jr., the U of I’s basketball star from 2024, score 15 of Minnesota’s 143 points in their blowout NBA playoff game, and just one episode of Jeopardy. Jack knew nearly everything. Back in the present, we felt richer after our exploration of past birthdays, baptisms and future mortality. Not like heaven exactly, but … getting there.
Its radiance was like that of a precious stone,
like jasper, clear as crystal.
The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it,
for the glory of God gave it light,
and its lamp was the Lamb.
(Acts 16, Psalm 100, Colossians 3, John 15)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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