Listening back to Easter

We enjoyed going to "The Little Cottage" in Ocean City, MD from Good Friday through Easter Sunday this year. I really like going away for holidays. It makes it more, well, like a holiday! :)

Tie-dyed eggs. Pretty cool.

The final products. There are a few decoupage eggs in here, too. We couldn't do the traditional version because "The Little Cottage" had no vinegar on hand. I'd forgotten that vinegar is a vital ingredient.

Eating ice cream out of the fancy sundae glasses was a real hit. The best part was that, because we were only there two days, the ice cream we bought HAD to be eaten in those two days. We were all pretty much in heaven.

In looking at this picture again, it is difficult to discern whether the spoon (and I can tell you it IS a spoon) has it's handle in Evelyn's mouth or part of it up her nose. I believe it is the former. 

We attended an Easter service at a church near the ferry to the NJ shore. I've come late in life to enjoy  visiting other churches. As a kid I hated going to other churches. I especially hated the churches where all the kids had to go forward to sit at the pastor's feet for a kiddie Bible story. I hated going to strange Sunday School classes. Fortunately we did this very little. My parents were good at "having our own church service" on vacation. 

Our kids are not like this yet, and I am so thankful. They just go in and take the experience as it comes. And, as so many churches we've visited seem to include some sort of refreshment, the experiences have been particularly well-received.

With shame I admit, as an adult, wasting perfectly good worship time at other churches picking apart music, sermons, or even decor. While not every visit to every church is a blissful worship experience, I have learned that God always communicating to me, even if it is that simple reminder to "be still..."

So our Easter Sunday was good. I loved that we went to church, even if it was unfamiliar. God was present. And I was blissfully aware of Him.

And at the end of the service, the lady sitting next to Evelyn said to her, "Honey, I have to show you something." She pulled out her phone, then pointed at Evelyn's newest favorite thrift store stuffed animal, Snowy Owl, who'd attended the service with us. "That owl's face looks EXACTLY like my dog!" She showed us the picture, and sure enough, there was quite a resemblance. "All through the service I kept seeing your owl out of the corner of my eye and thinking it was my dog!"

God is in all these things. I love how Frederick Buechner expresses this in his first memoir, The Sacred Journey, which I got for Christmas and devoured:

Listen. Your life is happening. You are happening....

The question is not whether the things that happen to you are chance things or God's things because, of course, they are both at once. There is no chance thing through which God cannot speak--even the walk from the house to the garage that you have walked ten thousand times before, even the moments when you cannot believe there is a God who speaks at all anywhere. He speaks, I believe, and the words he speaks are incarnate in the flesh and blood of our selves and of our own footsore and sacred journeys.

We cannot live our lives constantly looking back...but to live without listening at all is to live deaf to the fullness of the music. Sometimes we avoid listening for fear of what we may hear, sometimes for fear that we may hear nothing at all but the empty rattle of our own feet on the pavement. But..."be not afraid, for lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." He says he is with us on our journeys. He says he has been with us since each of our journeys began. Listen for him. Listen to the sweet and bitter airs of your present and your past for the sound of him.