December 3, 2001
DOWN HOME:
If life were hockey, he'd get icing call
___OK, raise your hand if you're ready for spring already.
___In theory at least, four seasons is a great concept. Spring marks the beginning of life, reminding us of God's creative blessings. Summer brings searing heat, but it also offers time to luxuriate in sunshine and enjoy mountains and beaches and the beauty of God's world. Fall offers crisp days, cool nights and the most gorgeous of nature's colors. Winter helps us understand the cycle of life as God intended it, the value of fallow fields and rest before regeneration.
___Yada, yada, yada.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___After last week's cold snap, I'll make a motion that we move to a three-season calendar. Or if we must endure winter every year, let's have it on a Friday night, so we can build a fire, snuggle in and then sleep it off on Saturday morning, which, of course, will dawn sunny and 72 degrees.
___I probably wouldn't have minded our first taste of winter (I know. Winter doesn't arrive until later this month.) if Joanna and I hadn't gone out to pick Lindsay up from work.
___Lindsay is our oldest daughter, and she works a couple of evenings a week at a pharmacy. She's 18 and usually drives her old car to work.
___She drove last week too. Later, she called to say the store was closing at 7:30 and to report that sleet had been pelting Lewisville. She doesn't have much experience driving in nasty weather, so we decided to go help her out.
___Jo and I figured we could drive one of our cars over to the pharmacy. One of us could bring Lindsay home, and the other could drive her car. When we got there, I volunteered to stay and wait for Lindsay so Jo could get back home. That was a great plan until Jo discovered a sheet of ice on Lindsay's windshield.
___Did you ever notice how anything involving extreme heat or extreme cold becomes the husband's job?
___Jo came walking back to my car, carrying Lindsay's window-scraper. We traded places.
___All of a sudden, I was a teenager again. Back then, we lived on a north-south street on the north side of Perryton, seven miles from the Oklahoma line in the Panhandle. On winter mornings in Perryton, you'll swear nothing's between you and the north pole but a barb-wire fence. Many mornings, I scraped ice off our 1960 Ford Falcon station wagon. That was one of my "chores." Small wonder I didn't move to Tahiti after high school.
___Last week, I let the heater in Lindsay's car work for a few minutes. Then I got out and chipped and scraped her windshield. Reminded me how our lives become encrusted with all the world pelts at us. We need the warmth of the gospel to transform us and the purifying action of the Holy Spirit to cleanse us and make us road-worthy again.
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