Choose Life

Yesterday was a full and active day!  After completing the 5-K (awaking at 5:00 a.m., and sleeping as  poorly as usual the night before a race), we ate a hasty lunch, went to the matinee in Emerald Isle, and watched a touching little movie called A Dog's Purpose.  The movie was panned by the critics but will be appreciated by any dog lover; Martha and I have owned several dogs, one in particular, who we loved, and there is nothing like the unconditional love a dog can have for a person.

On the way back, we stopped at the N. C. Aquarium in Pine Knoll Shores for an hour or two, which is one of the nicest aquariums we have visited and which we toured more extensively last year.  It felt good to move those tired legs after sitting motionless in a movie theater, wandering from room to room and marveling at the strange aquatic creatures that inhabit this infinitely interesting world; I gaze out the window on the wide ocean as I am writing this, and it catches my breath to think about that unseen underwater life teeming out beneath the shining surface.

Hundreds of species of little minnows and chubs and shiners, schools of small fish swarming in circles in the deep tanks, like rush hour in a big city yet somehow never colliding; a big shark with jagged teeth gliding slowly past, evidently well-fed or he would be feasting unfettered before the horrified eyes of spectators on this buffet swirling all around him; rays gliding like space creatures fallen into the sea; horse-shoe crabs with blue blood, that we found is used in medicine to detect the presence of  bacteria in new drugs; and some fishes with faces that look uncannily like people I know.  And lion fish, and strange diaphanous jellyfish, brainless and spineless and eyeless, floating in the depths.  It is like visiting another world, and yet it is our world, right here and now.

Another beautiful sunset called to graceful and beautiful conclusion this active day.

I read The Likeness in the evening until I became so sleepy that I realized I had missed something, so I put it down and re-read parts of that chapter again this afternoon, catching all of the tell-tale signs.  Tana French is skilled at casually dropping sentences like, "And that is the first mistake I made," and the reader sits straight up and asks himself, "Wait what?  What mistake?!!"

Jason preached this morning, and we are starting to appreciate him more and more - so earnest and so young!  At the beginning of the service, smiling uncontrollably, he read Luke 1:41 - "When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit" - by way of announcing the news that his wife was pregnant with their second child.  Today was Communion Sunday, or "Service of Word and Table."  I have always enjoyed watching how different churches celebrate the Lord's Supper; here, the congregation goes to the altar and kneels (if they can - one distinguished gentleman with a cane carefully and stubbornly lowered himself down, and then struggled back up again) and there are bowls filled with wafers all along the rail; you take a wafer yourself, and the Pastors carry trays down the altar rail from each end with the wine/grape juice.  Martha noticed that some worshipers were leaving money, little rolled-up bills, in some of the many empty holes where the glasses went.  

It is always moving to think that on this first Sunday in the month, so many Christians around the world are celebrating this ancient mystery of Grace, perhaps shoulder to shoulder, perhaps standing around a little table breaking a common loaf, perhaps bowing their heads in a pew, or on a kneeler - brothers and sisters in Christ.  Jason preached about "Choosing Life," and there was an undercurrent that made it clear that he, too, was torn by the divisions in our country where so many are saying that we should be building walls instead of bridges, and keeping out those who yearn for freedom instead of welcoming them.  He described riding in a car on a long trip with a friend with opposing political views, and how both of them ended up unchanged in opinion but realizing they still loved and respected each other.  "We are called to choose life with our relationships with others."  Well said.  And now he and his wife will be bringing new life into the world.

And for our closing hymn today, let us sing:

Beautiful words, wonderful words,
wonderful words of life.
Beautiful words, wonderful words,
wonderful words of life.