While Nancy Roesler and Wilma were out to an Advent dinner last evening Ken and I went to a small Chinese restaurant in Howell, Mi.after spending a couple of hours figuring out the computer world. Ken is the expert in that world so I just kept saying yes!
After an excellent meal the check was delivered with 2 little fortune cookie. I was still finishing my meal so Ken got first pick and I was left with the other cookie. Why share this anyway? We have all torn open a cookie package - some sayings are fun, others are stupid, the "lucky" numbers on the back of the slips of paper have never worked with the lottery etc. But, the message of my cookie has been the stimulus for this blog - remember yesterday was Thursday 12/2/10 and today is Friday, "On Friday your creative side will shine forth with exceptional ideas." The "lucky" numbers on the back of the slip of paper are, 2 6 13 16 35 46 in case any of you want to try your "LUCK" !
Tony Campolo's famous talk "It Friday, but Sunday is Coming" has been swimming through my head since that fortune cookie:
Its Friday - Caiaphas, the high priest that year, and the Pharisees convened a council of the Sanhedrin....they gave orders that if anyone knew where Jesus was to report it, so that they might seize Jesus and kill him.
Its Friday - Jesus, a week before the Passover takes his disciples to Ephraim and there he stayed with them.
Why Ephraim? In modern Israel this village is called Taiyibeh. Ephraim was a city of refuge in the Old Testament. Ephraim as a village has a whole network of underground tunnels so that a person could escape into the wilderness should there ever be a threat on their life. Jesus takes his disciples to Ephraim to protect them from the orders of the high priest. Taiyibeh, according to Dr. Jim Martin with whom I have studied in Israel on a number of occasions, has been used until at least the 1500 to protect people from the invading armies. (When we encounter the name of a place in Israel we should ask ourselves, "What else happen in that same location or at least near that location? The writers of the Bible assumed that people had a background of knowledge about their history. Biblical history is not the forte for we who live in the 21st century.)
Its Friday - the disciples decide to follow Peter back to Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee to start fishing again.
Its Friday - for so many of us in our times. It is so dark on Friday --- "a darkness fell over all the land" when Jesus was crucified. A darkness can invade our lives when it is only Friday. Friday seems to last forever in a failed marriage, in the lose of a job, in the "run away" of a child or the death of a child or other loved one. Fridays are truly hard to take, darkness fills all the cracks in our lives, darkness lives in palaces, or dirt floored huts."BUT SUNDAY IS COMING" as Tony Campolo used to shout when he ended his speeches and then he would say, " AND DON'T YOU EVER FORGET IT!"
A fortune cookie, and a Thursday morning group of who men who were studying John's gospel about the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the death of Jesus and then Sunday is coming! The resurrection changes everything - first inside of us and then sweeping into every facet of our lives!!!
Merry Christmas - truly, truly, truly.
Bill
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