Let the trumpet sound!

Spring’s daffodils take me back to my childhood in a rainy Western  Washington valley renowned for acres and acres of golden blooms. Daffodils are glorious, but short-lived.  As Robert Frost wrote in his famed 1923 poem: spring’s first "green" is gold, and nature's "hardest hue to hold." I find it meaningful that daffodils bloom close to Easter. Their trumpet-like centers prompt me to recall the magnificent chorus from Handel’s Messiah that quotes 1 Corinthians 15:51-52:
Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
In ancient times, trumpets heralded great news. They were associated with royalty and victory.  What greater occasion to herald than the reunion of Christ with Christ-followers!

Like a hand in a glove, these verses pair with another by Paul about death and eternal life:

We who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep [dead].  For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.  And the dead in Christ will rise first.  Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.  And thus we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17)
Or, as the late author Barbara Johnson put it humorously in one of her book titles: “He’s Gonna Toot and I’m Gonna Scoot!”

As for “scoot,” this year I was reminded of my mortality as I got hit by a string of serious illnesses, including pneumonia. Recently, in my doctor’s office for help with a month-long battle with bronchitis, I asked what might be compromising my health. Aware of the mind-body connection in illness, I told him of stresses from someone's many negative E-mails and phone calls. One day, the same person showed up at our door and ranted "I hate you" repeatedly, then turned and left. Such stresses, my doctor said, no doubt took their toll.

Yes, I pray for this person. The day of the front porch “hate” rant, my adrenalin flowing from this surprise attack, I sensed Jesus saying, “This is not of Me. Remember, while I was dying on the cross, people ranted negatives at Me.”

He died... but He rose again! The miracle of His resurrection guarantees the eternal life, free of sin and sorrow, that we rightly celebrate at Easter. Let the trumpet sound!  Each day, we’re closer to Heaven’s final call. Hallelujah!

Junk call reflections

Photo taken late fall at our local riverfront park.
The sight reminded me that God has purposes 
worth reflecting on, even in life's "winter" times.
 

The phone rang and I almost tripped and broke my big toe/neck/something-else-vital in my hurry to answer it. In an urgent, buy-it-now voice, the robotic caller asked if I knew how many people fall and can’t get up? Thus, the recording said, I urgently needed to be connected with a standing-by operator to order the magic button that will summon an ambulance, Boy Scouts, National Guard, and Secret Service to my limp body.
 
I chose their “do not call me again” option, although I’m sure they will try again. Since my age has bumped me into solicitors’ list for “health gadgets”—despite signing up for the national “do not call” lists—I’m sure I’ll hear from the panic-button people again. But whenever those calls do come, I find myself reflecting a moment on who I am and where I am going.  This late-fall (pun intended) reflection photo of branches in an inlet of our local waterfront park speaks of my reflective mood right now. Perhaps that’s because I recently attended the memorial service for a faithful 84-year-old Christian who lived a block away.

Funerals prompt reminders of our own mortality. So do death-flirting incidents like bad accidents. One night in 1997, as our family headed home from a vacation, a drinking driver imagined that he was making a turn on the Indy 500 track. Unfortunately, our car was in his way as he veered across the center line. SMASH! Our car turned into junk and we spent a night in an emergency room hours away from home. Ditto this past Thanksgiving, when a teen driver learned the hard way that speed and corners are incompatible, and his fish-tailing car smashed into us, even though, seeing him coming, we’d pulled off the road.

 As my husband and I watched our destroyed vehicle cranked onto a tow truck (we escaped without visible injury), we expressed similar thoughts about how God knows the day and hour that our task on earth is done. For believers, the next destination is Heaven. E.M. Bounds said it so well in his book, Heaven: A Place, A City, a Home (Revell, 1921, p. 125):

Heaven ought to draw and engage us.  Heaven ought to so fill our hearts and hands, our manner and conversation, our character and our features, that all would see that we are foreigners, strangers to this world, natives of a nobler clime, fairer than this. Out of tune, out of harmony, out of course, we must be of this world. The very atmosphere of this world should be chilling to us and noxious, its suns eclipsed and its companionship dull and insipid.  Heaven is our native land and home to us, and death to us is not the dying hour, but the birth hour.

God will never call us with a nuisance sales pitch. Yet His call to our hearts is firm and true. Daily, He whispers that Heaven-focused question, “What will you do today on earth in response to My Son’s costly death for your salvation? How will you show this world that Jesus matters to you?”

At such times we need more than “reflection.” We may fall, but God is ready to help us up. And then, we need to get to work and stir the waters in the time left!