Easter Memories

As I hid the eggs in the damp darkness of our backyard early Easter morning and filled baskets anticipating the joy-filled faces that would find them, I was taken back to the time when I was the recipient of such surprises. Then it was I who searched for eggs hidden in places only a father could hide them and discovered the secret desires in my Easter basket that only a mother would know to purchase. I remembered the pre-dawn Holy Week services at our church that my family never missed - particularly the donut feast in the fellowship hall following the services. I returned to the glory of the Easter services of my childhood and the harkening sound of the trumpets we had in church only two times a year. Now I was the father finding just the right place to hide those multi-colored ellipticals and Susan was the one making magic with wicker and plastic grass. What a privilege to create family memories. What a blessing to have those memories in my own heart.

Garrison Keillor in his book Leaving Home tells a story with similar sentiment.

"Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted. We know that as we remember some gift given to us long ago. Suddenly it's 1951, I'm nine years old, in the bow of a green wooden rowboat, rocking on Lake Wobegon. It's five o'clock in the morning, dark; I'm shivering, mist comes up off the water, the smell of lake and weeds and Uncle Al's coffee as he puts a worm on my hook and whispers what to do when the big one bites. I lower my worm slowly into the dark water and brace my feet against the bow and wait for the immense fish to bite.

Thousands of gifts, continually returning to us. Uncle Al thought he was taking his nephew fishing, but he made a permanent work of art in my head, a dark morning in the mist, the coffee, the boat rocking, whispering, shivering, waiting for the big one. Still waiting. Still shivering."

Will you join me in celebrating the works of art; those painted in our heads and the ones we are creating for others. Let us remember nothing we do is ever wasted when it is done in love. Let us remember what was done in love for us - even the loving actions of our Lord of which we are reminded this next week

Grace and peace,
John Mollet