What I Celebrate.

If Dad were alive, he'd be 61 today.  There would be an ice cream cake, or heavenly hash cake, and there would either be a trip out to Eddie's or maybe steak, salad, corn and some other delcious side dish.  There would be gifts that Dad would say we shouldn't have bought, cards that would warrant plenty of eye rolls for being so ridiculous (usually from me), and a general sense of merriment, especially since today is also my sister and brother-in-law's anniversary.

But, Dad isn't here.  I have no cake, I will save a few bucks on gifts this year, and I don't feel especially merry.

I miss Dad.  That will not be a surprise to anyone.

I don't cry every day now, but there are still moments...Dad was concerned about leaving a legacy, but his concern was totally unfounded...he is in so much of what I do, and I know that the same is true for my sister and mother, among others.

I don't know the details of how she lost her father, but a friend and former co-worker of mine, Erin, also lost her Dad when he was far too young (by our standards, anyway).  All signs indicate that he was of similar caliber to my own dad, and her love for him was evident.  I remember scrolling through Facebook one day and saw her status, which read something to the effect of this: "Today, we celebrate Dad's new birth in Heaven."  I was struck by that and, today, I find myself falling back on it even as I continue to be a bit sad.  After all, the promises that I trust say that we not only defeat death, but also find new life in passing beyond our time here on Earth.  It's a challenge to understand this--especially since I've seen the box that holds Dad's cremated remains--but it's such a comfort to believe in it.  So, perhaps, instead of being sad about Dad missing his 61st birthday here, I ought to celebrate that he's already over six months old in Heaven!!

And again, Heaven is a pretty mysterious entity to me--lots of streets of gold and river of life talk--not to mention all those precious jewels--but I'm beginning to see its mystery as a gift, too.  Maybe God didn't want to give away all of the surprises because, now, we have a chance to let our imaginations run wild and free.  When I was little, I thought that Heaven was a giant room with red carpeting and lots of Whirlpool washing machines (now laundry makes me think of a different place, but that's beside the point...).  Now, it's fun to envision that Heaven is kind of like the Idea Warehouse on Imagination Movers (if you're not the parent of a young child who has seen this, then you need to know that it is a children's show on Disney, and that the job of the Movers is to solve Idea Emergencies).  In their warehouse, they have lots of different rooms: a farm room, a bubble garden, a lost and found room, a loud noises room--countless rooms to meet the needs of their varying challenges.  Maybe that's a bit like Heaven.  In that case, I'm certain that Dad ran into a number of familiar faces (most certainly, my grandpa) in the WVU room.  And he probably found Mom Henthorn (my amazing great grandmother) in the Old Hymns room, chatting it up with John and Charles Wesley.  I'm sure he spends lots of time talking Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ear off in the Totally Awesome Martyr room.  And there's no doubt that Dad will have made a few stops in the eggnog room, as well as the hole-in-one-everytime room (I mean, it's Heaven, right?!)

Ok, Heaven's probably not quite like that.  But all signs point to it being pretty amazing.  More than we can imagine, in fact.  So why shouldn't I mark the anniversaries of Dad's departure from Earth as celebrations of his new life?!?  And why wouldn't I want to help other people figure out how they can get in on the action, too?!

This brings me to another point, which is one toward which I've given a lot of thought, especially since hearing Dave's sermon on Sunday about hospitality--and the danger that is present as 'hospitality' moves more and more toward being a professional entity than a common courtesy.  In fact, there's not a person in the Bible who wouldn't be completely offended by the manner in which we disregard opportunities to be hospitable.  It didn't matter who you were, why you were in town, or what I had going on that night--if you needed a place to stay and food to eat, then I gave it to you.  The story of Elijah finding housing with a woman and her ailing son comes to mind--she confessed that she had barely enough oil and flour to make bread, but still welcomed Elijah into her home--and, though the Bible does not guarantee that we will be rewarded for every faithful act that we do in this way, she was given endless supplies of oil and flour as a result of her faith and her open doors.  My experience in Malawi, Africa was the same.  These people had next to nothing, but found a way to put together the richest feast they could manage (actually, it was beyond what they could manage) to honor and serve and welcome me.

Joe and I discussed the fact that we feel like we do a fairly good job of being hospitable most of the time, and I pointed out that our differences are actually helpful here, as we tend to find different ways of offering hospitality.  He's really good at some of them, I'm really good at others.  For example, even when we host guests in our home, we both know that Joe should do the bulk of the cooking and I should do the bulk of the conversing.

But bringing it all back to my thoughts on Heaven: Heaven would not be so appealing if we weren't promised a warm and amazing welcome.  And neither is a church--or a home--or a faith.  I'm not saying we should be disingenuous.  Making promises about Christianity that are untrue is not a good way to win people over.  And, let's face it, there's a lot of really nasty stuff in the Bible...and really hard stuff, too...but there are ways to be honest about such things and to still offer a sense of what hospitality is like.  We're given an amazing gift in knowing all the facets of the faith to which we ascribe; it is up to us to decide whether or not our lives will reflect the same sort of (often-unfounded) hatefulness and judgement, or if we will demonstrate that we have learned from the past, changed and grown in ways that allow us to be loving, welcoming, and invested in peoples' lives--even people who aren't quite like us or who inconvenience us or whatever.  After all, lots of those folks are going to find their way into Heaven, too.  We might as well start loving them now.