Crossing the Delaware

       It always strikes me, the rapidity of which spring sunshine sneaks up behind you. Storm clouds give way in surrender before clear skies, though not without a fight. Those showers gifted with the peculiar task of bringing forth May flowers grace many a morning with their presence.

     And as I mused last year at this time, there is no lack of activity to fill these days. As spring ushers in a renewed delight in sunshine, so it also brings the chaos of finishing off another school year (and all the ensuing tests and paperwork!). 

    “Memory is not what the heart desires” (Tolkien). Yet those memories leaving us the nostalgia of wanting more inevitably proceed from a moment well-lived. C.S. Lewis writes in Perelandra of the remembrance of things bringing joy twice-over. This makes sense to me, as I keep seeing Jesus in the Upper Room instructing His disciples to “Do this in remembrance of me.” Why bother with communion if it weren’t for our tendency to forget the Cross and the ensuing joy?  We need reminders.

  My family likes to drive. Mostly to far-away coffee shops or beaches. Or someplace obscure no one has really heard of. On these trips a certain member of my family has a tendency to point out, rather voraciously, the passing-by of something we should all take note of.  In the case of crossing the Delaware, we were aroused from our jet-lagged sleep numerous times.  These ‘announcements’ used to scare my dad, because he thought the shrieking meant he was about to hit a small child. Now he knows better, and that we are probably near a coffee shop. Or crossing the Delaware.

    Joshua was told to collect memorial stones. God instructed him to take one for each tribe of Israel to commemorate certain events.  Inquisitive children wondering what the piles of rocks meant would ask, leading to a conversation on all that God had done. Said children would then grow up and have little questioners of their own, so eventually “all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, that you may fear the Lord your God forever” (Joshua 4:24).

    We need our own memorial stones. We need the person unafraid to draw our swayed attention to the moment that should not be missed. People forget. Or we simply never pay attention during the process of living, and then complain when the good stuff is gone. Hence those ‘undesirable memories.’ Though what if we look for, revel in, and return those moments to the Giver of all good things?. I can't help but think they must be numbered among those memories that bring joy twice-over. We can relish life for the wonder it holds, for the glory of God revealed in it. So if spring sunshine is sneaking up behind you and you're about to cross the Delaware, don't forget to make a memory that will bring joy--- twice over.