June 26, 2000
CYBERCOLUMN:
Rain, Jesse James and time
___"I'm sitting here under the old oak tree, reflecting on the recent events in our small town that's not so small any more. For one, the bottom fell out the other day, and it rained. Empty buckets filled with rain. Rain drenched earth. The grass sang hallelujah! Rain fell so fast that Wal-Mart couldn't even move boxes and lawnmowers to a dry spot.
___The rain came in droves as the lake here turned an ugly, muddy color. All that muddy water reminded me of the words of English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Water, water,every where / And all the boards did shrink; / Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink."
JOHN DUNCAN
___And later in the same poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": "The silly buckets on the deck, / That had so long remained, / I dreamt that they were filled with dew, / And when I awoke, it rained."
___If rain did not bring enough excitement, then Jesse James sure did. The authorities exhumed the bandit gunslinger's body to see if he was who the tombstone in north Hood County said he was. Local legend that swirls like gossip claims Jesse quit slinging guns, changed his name, made a home in Hood County, and set about rocking in a chair while telling tales on the old Granbury square.
___If once upon a time Jesse had a quiet burial, he sure had a noisy exhumation. CNN and other major television networks watched the scene to make sure Jesse did not rise from the dead. Noise from the backhoe added to the oohs and aahs of the crowd, meaning we haven't had this much excitement since the deafening blare of the fire truck sirens in the annual July 4th parade.
___ The wild scenes set me to thinking: How strange that we live in a world where blessings fall faster than rain on a crisp morning, but in the busy pace of our lives we often fail to thank God for just one blessing.
___ And how strange that we'll spend thousands of dollars and tons of time trying to figure out if a dead man is who his tombstone says, when most people fill time without ever knowing who they are.
___ Do you know who you are?
___ That's why Jesus came--to shower us with the bounty of his blessing, which refreshes the soul like dew on the morning grass; to reveal himself to us as light so that we might understand who we are while living in this shadowed world. Jesus invites us to drink in the blessing, to bask in his glorious light. How?
___ The Apostle Paul puts up an umbrella on a rainy day and peeks into a hole where a casket lifts slowly and tells us: "Be careful, then, how you live--not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil" (Ephesians 5:15-16). Paul encourages the saints of his sustenance to make the most of every opportunity or to redeem, "to buy back" the time.
___ The Swiss place clocks on their churches. As the spires point to heaven and peek around corners of villages nestled deep in awesome mountain ranges, the clocks tick away time. Do the Swiss place clocks on their churches to display their skill for the creation of timepieces? Or do the Swiss set clocks on churches within the view of village dwellers to remind passers-by of the value of time? Time, after all, ticks away the precious seconds often wasted rather than bought back.
___ So cherish time--on days when rain drips on your nose, in moments when excitement builds, in a world of buckets and backhoes, of church spires and church clocks. And cherish Jesus, too, because he turns time into blessing. He exchanges dusty tombstones for the golden pavestones of eternal life.
___ John Duncan is pastor of Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and the writer of numerous articles in various journals and magazines
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