Over the course of my almost 80 years I have come in contact and interacted with many places and faces.
I have lived in Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, California, Washington State, Kentucky and Korea. In the last two I was in the US Army during a time when there was a draft. If I hadn’t volunteered, I never would have lived there. But, my life has been enriched by living in those two places. When I was young, I enjoyed traveling to many places to see how other people lived, what their customs were, and observe their sights and sounds. I was humbled by the mountains I saw in Colorado, California, Washington, New York and Korea. I was overwhelmed by the spectacular Autumn colors in the Hudson River Valley and other parts of the Eastern United States. It also was humbling to stand on the shores of the Great Lakes, especially Lake Michigan which is only about 40 miles away from where I now live.
I have met and carried on with many gracious people like Francis Goodell who I saw personifying the tender compassion of Christ with one of her hospice clients, as she stroked the dying woman’s hair. I have been shown grace by a First Sergeant in the Army, a black man, who gave me a second chance after I had made a foolish decision that ended me in jail overnight. When the Military Delinquency Report came down to his office, he told me he was giving me another chance and threw the report, which called for a response, into a nearby trash can. I was given a path to try by Dr. Brownson (of Words of Hope) when I was wondering if I had received a call into the ministry. I was blessed by my late wife, Inga, and her family in New York who welcomed me and included me in all their plans. We all grieved together when Inga passed away suddenly. I shall always be grateful for my New York family. I currently am so appreciative of my siblings, Becky, Mary, Matt and Jim who with their spouses have come to hold such a wonderful place in my heart. There was a time when I wondered if my brothers and I would ever get along, but now we get together every week to walk and talk, with lots of teasing, and reminiscing. I was stunned and overjoyed when I heard yes from Cindy, my current wife, when I asked her to marry me. With her by my side, I was finally able to put up a Christmas tree again.
I can’t know how all these places are doing now. I am not inclined to travel these days. But I hope I left a blessing each place I lived. I can’t know if I did, but I can and do know that I have carried a little piece of each place in my memory. Some memories are more vivid somehow. With others, they seemed tucked away in a smaller part of my brain which I don’t access for some reason very often.
I hope with many of the faces I have had contact with, I have blessed them in some fashion. Each interaction with them is buried somewhere in my memory. Some are more vivid than others. But they are all there.
And I have been enriched by each place and face in my life.
I did not realize it at the time, but when I kissed my wife Inga good-bye that morning in 2006, I would never see her alive again. She was on the way to compete with other Bridge players. I had just parked my car in the church’s parking lot and was walking to the parsonage. She was already in her car getting ready to leave.
I could have just waved to her. We had been married 17 years and didn’t need physical contact to communicate our feelings. Sometimes I believed our body language said it. Instead of waving from the end of the parking lot, I decided to walk over to her car and give her a kiss. When I was close enough, she rolled down the window. I put my head in close to hers and gave her a kiss with feeling. I didn’t consider for a minute that I was giving her a final good-bye kiss.
Later that morning, I received a phone call from another player informing me that Inga had collapsed. The friend did not know how serious it was, but thought she should at least let me know. Then she said, “I am so sorry.” This puzzled me.
I found out Inga had been taken to a nearby hospital, so I immediately got into my car and drove to it. I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but none of the possiblities were good. She had complained of a headache that morning and I urged her to seek medical help. She refused because she had been dealing with several physical issues with none of them turning out well. She was exhausted from all the “help” the medical profession had given.
When I walked into the Hospital’s Emergency Room and told the receptionist who I was, she said the doctor wanted to talk to me. I was ushered into a small waiting room where I mulled over what the doc might want to tell me. I feared a brain tumor, but what the doctor finally told me was Inga died from a burst brain aneurysm. The coroner told me she probably died within 30 seconds of the rupture.
The grief from her sudden loss was mind-numbing bringing on wave after wave of difficult emotions. I have almost no memories of the early days or the funeral.
One thing the experience reinforced in me is how important it is to show and tell people how you feel because you never know how much time you will have together.
Several years ago, singer songwriter James Taylor had a song with these lyrics “Shower the people you love with love. Show them the way that you feel.” I have made these words my goal for all my important relationships like Cindy whom I married several years after Inga’s death. We never part without saying “Love you” or “I love you.” She now has her sons telling her the same at the end of each phone call.
I am so glad I didn’t just wave good-bye to my wife that day. I walked over to her, gave her a kiss and told her I loved her.
Something happened to me this year that may cause me to believe in Santa Claus again. It all started one afternoon this month.
I was walking into my pharmacy when I saw a Salvation Army volunteer ringing a bell inviting donations for the needy. I usually avoid eye contact with these volunteers, but for some reason I looked him over. He was an older black man with a snow white head of hair, mustache and beard, a remarkable contrast to his ebony skin disfigured by a jagged 2 inch scar on his cheek. He smiled and greeted me with a musical sounding “Merry Christmas.” I offered a meek “merry Christmas” in return. He kept smiling at me giving me the feeling he knew something about me, what I’d been going through lately.
It had been a hectic season of activities which began with a chaotic Thanksgiving with too much rich food, noise and confusion. Since all of my five children are under eight years old, it felt like bedlam with each of them taking their turn crying and spilling food everywhere. I had escaped to my office for a few quiet moments until Betty found me and requested my presence back in our “Twenty First Century Wild West Show.”
By the end of the day, all I could feel was a splitting headache. The next few days didn’t help with several trips to the noisy stores blaring out their Black Friday Event Items.
Seeing that man’s smile and joyful greeting reminded me that Christmas is a time for smiles and a time for recognizing one’s blessings, which start with Thanksgiving and end with heartfelt gifts to and from our loved ones at Christmas. And in the middle of the gift giving, comes the remembrance of God’s greatest gift to everyone. I saw all these things in that man’s full-faced smile and good wishes. I sensed he read the chaos and confusion in my face and offered again the gifts this season brings to everyone. And he was able to beam joy despite whatever caused the cut on his cheek.
I obviously read a lot into this interaction, but maybe it planted in me again a seed of belief in the goodness of Christmas as shown in the story of another white-haired, bearded old man. He gives gifts to the children, who still believe, all the way up to the adults who need to feel the magic of Christmas again.
Say a prayer before you sleep. Let His gracious love surround you as, without a care, you drift into sleep. This is your time now to revitalize your mind, body and soul. All the thoughts that directed your words and actions through the day can now be let go. Your mind will now roam the shadowy world of half recognized ideas and images.
You are older now. The years have marched along with you in step some of the time. However, there were times when you were completely out of it. Where sleep in the past was an easy journey into rest, nowadays it is a time with interrupted periods of sleep. On a given night, you might be up for the bathroom only once. Other nights, it will be three or four times. And always in the morning, your sleep is the deepest and coming out of that is the biggest work of all.
Still you come to Him for rest.
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28 (ESV)
A reader of my blog posts asked if a serpent wrapped around a staff in a doctor’s office is related to the ancient healing practice used by Moses for everyone bitten by serpents.
“Then the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.” (Numbers 21:6-9, ESV)
Interestingly, Jesus referred to this same event as a metaphor for spiritual healing as well.
“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15, ESV)
Are these two biblical accounts related to the serpent wrapped around a staff in your doctor’s office? Probably not.
The Internet Encyclopedia’s identified this symbol as the staff of Aesculapius which has long been a symbol of medicine, and today is the official insignia of the American Medical Association. Aesculapius was the god of medicine in Greek and Roman mythology, and the snake was his symbol. By the fifth century b.c. several temples to Aesculapius were active in Greece 1
A Jewish authority points to two ancient sources for the modern medical symbol.
There are actually two slightly different symbols of snakes coiled around a staff that have come to be associated with the medical profession. Both seem to come from Greek mythology.
There is the single snake coiled around a staff, which is meant to symbolize the staff of the pagan god of healing, known as Asklepios in Greece and Aesculapius in Rome.
And then there is the symbol of a staff with two snakes and wings. This one is referred to as a caduceus and is meant to symbolize the staff of the Greek messenger god Hermes, also known as Mercury. This symbol eventually also became associated with medicine.
So it seems that both symbols are associated with pagan idolatry. 2
For Christians, however, the bronze serpent, has its significance in miraculous healing by Almighty God. Because of Christ’s reference to it, the bronze serpent points to the cross where Jesus died thus providing spiritual healing to all who look upon it, accepting its covering over their sins.
The Jamison-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary highlighted the stunning parallels between the incident of the serpent draped on a staff and Jesus Christ on the cross:
“The venom of the fiery serpents, shooting through the veins of the rebellious Israelites, was spreading death through the camp… [an] emblem of the perishing condition of men by reason of sin. In both cases the remedy was divinely provided. In both the way of cure strikingly resembled that of the disease. Stung by serpents, by a serpent they are healed… 3
It continues pointing out that as the uplifted serpent was without venom, healing those who look up to it, so too Christ was without any sin, spiritually healing those who look up to Him. Because of Christ’s making the connection, the symbol has become a very important pointer to healing for followers of Jesus.
Therefore, whoever looks to Him as Savior can be reminded of this truth whenever they see the snake emblem in a doctor’s office. Remembering this, could possibly provide calm while he or she is waiting to see that practitioner.
In 2019 as my date with a heart surgeon approached, I asked for a prayer for me just before I went in. A chaplain stopped and in his prayer referred to hospitals as places of healing. This calmed me down almost immediately. Instead of focusing on the pain and difficulties I might experience afterward, I was able think about my new health the surgery would provide. I am grateful for doctors, nurses, surgeons and chaplains who continue the healing envisioned in the serpent on a staff from all these various traditions.
“The cross is one of the oldest and most universal of all symbols [for Christians]. It is, of course, the perfect symbol of Christ because of his sacrifice upon the cross. In a broader sense, however, the cross has become the mark or sign of the Christian religion, the emblem of atonement, and the symbol of salvation and redemption through Christianity…The crucifix is a representation of Christ on the cross.” 1
There are many variations of the cross, but the two chief ones are the Latin cross which shows a longer upright bar than the horizontal. The Greek cross shows both bars of equal length.
The cross is sometimes worn as an adornment of jewelry, but St. Paul wrote about it in a differently, wonder filled way. “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 2
For Jesus followers the cross has deep and important significance. It was the place where Jesus paid the ultimate price for our sins. Crucifixion is a “method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross or beam and left to hang until eventual death…It was used as a punishment by the Persians, Carthaginians and Romans, among others. Crucifixion has been used in parts of the world as recently as the 21st century” 3 For Christians, scripture shares the meaning of Jesus’ violent death as an atonement (covering) for sins. The “Son of Man” was made “to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”4
A crucifix (from the Latin cruci fixus meaning ‘(one) fixed to a cross’) is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross. The representation of Jesus himself on the cross is referred to in English as the corpus (Latin for ‘body’)
There are many groups of Christians who use crucifixes in their churches (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutherans, and Anglicans). The symbol demonstrates the cruel death Jesus died to provide redemption for all who believe and receive its truth. 3
It is a curiosity to Christian scholars why images of the cross or crucifixion did not appear in the early centuries after Christ’s departure. Some speculate that the early believers did not want to portray their Savior in so shocking a way. Others speculate that portraying Christ on a cross would actually profane the mystery of the Son of God.
Today, those of us who identify as Jesus followers view the cross or crucifix as a reminder of the complete cost to Jesus to secure forgiveness of sins. And Jesus willingly paid it. The sight of a cross or crucifix then is one of the most important symbols to Jesus followers, reminding us of the cost to Him, but also a reminder that each follower is called to take up his or her own cross and follow Him. “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philippians 3:8-11, ESV).
Rather than merely observing the symbol as a representation of some distant event, the cross/crucifix can serve as a reminder that to follow Jesus involves dying to self. A man who personified this in his life was Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and anti-Nazi dissident. He expressed his belief with these words: “Disciples will not be weakened by suffering, worn down, and embittered until they are broken. Instead, they bear suffering, by the power of him who supports them. The disciples bear the suffering laid on them only by the power of him who bears all suffering on the cross. As bearers of suffering, they stand in communion with the Crucified.” Bonhoeffer was martyred for his stand against Hitler shortly before the end of World War 2.
“Signs and Symbols in Christian Art,” George Ferguson (p.164, 166)
Why do Christians use lilies at Easter in their churches and even in their homes? As a minister, every Easter the front of our church held a number of Easter Lily’s in full bloom. They gave off a strong fragrance which, if I am honest, actually bothered my allergies. I still, however, appreciated their beauty but did not know of and appreciate their religious symbolism.
“Christianity’s most important holiday is rich in symbols, some secular, some religious, from the Easter bunny who brings treats and toys to children, to the Easter lily, a tall, stalky plant topped by graceful, trumpet-shaped blooms. But while the fragrant flower that fills churches and homes come Easter might seem simply a beautiful decoration welcoming springtime, over the course of its fascinating history it has come to feature a far deeper connotation. Today’s Easter lily meaning is most commonly tied to the Bible and even Jesus Christ himself.”
This same website also goes on to point to a closer connection to Jesus Christ. White Lilies embody purity, the trumpet shaped blooms seem to be horns announcing the good news of Christ’s resurrection. Also, the life cycle of an Easter Lily, which spends several years beneath the earth before coming into full blossom, is very much like Our Lord’s time in the ground after his crucifixion and then his bursting forth in absolute glory on Easter morning.
Lilies are mentioned a few times in the Bible
“My beloved is mine, and I am his; he grazes among the lilies.” (Song of Solomon 2:16, ESV)
“I will be like the dew to Israel; he shall blossom like the lily; he shall take root like the trees of Lebanon;” (Hosea 14:5)
In the Gospel according to Luke, Jesus refers to the beauty of lilies: “Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!” (Luke 12:27-28, ESV)
Beautiful lilies then are visible signs that Almighty God will take care of each of us. Are we not more valuable than a lily? Therefore, we need never worry about our future.
I invite the reader the next time he or she sees an Easter Lily to study the white purity of the flower, notice the trumpet shape announcing the resurrection of our Lord, and take in again the blessed hope of our own that comes to everyone who embraces Jesus as LORD and Savior. The Easter Lily is a physical reminder that death is not the end for anyone who believes and trusts in the LORD.
The six-pointed star is a symbol seen throughout the world since the beginning of history. It has had different names, depending on what religion or belief system it appears in.
In the book “Symbols: Signposts of Devotion,” Dr. Ratha Doyle McGee describes two main star symbols for Christians.
The first is called the Creator Star which consists of two equal sided triangles, one placed on top facing down on another facing up. The three sided angles represent the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit all present as a unity at the moment of creation.
The second is a five-pointed star which has a few different names: Star of Epiphany, Star of Jacob, Star of Jesse or the Star of Bethlehem. The Star of Epiphany is most often applied to this symbol. However, there is an interesting other possibility for this star. It is also sometimes a symbol for Mary, the mother of Jesus. The Hebrew version of the name Mary is Miriam which means star.
For Jews, the six-pointed star is the Star of David and appears on the flag of Israel. Consisting of two overlaid equal sided triangles, it is also called the “Shield of David.” In the Bible it was King David who united the tribes of Israel.
During the Holocaust of WWII, Jews were forced to wear the Star of David to identify themselves. If they failed to do this, they were punished. Some came to believe that this requirement for Jews actually strengthened the significance of the star, adding elements of martyrdom to its meaning.
For a Christian, looking at the star symbol can be a reminder that God has been, is now, and will forever be, intimately linked to His creation.
Rich Rockwood, Christian Author 