I could write my life in keys. The first key I remember was to the 1878 farm house my parents bought after we moved back from Intercession City, Florida, where daddy had been in Bible College. I was four. It was a squarish house that I now know was in the Federalist style of architecture. It was just down the gravel county road from my grandparent’s small farm outside Burlington, Michigan. There was no inside plumbing or running water, but the house was one of my favorite childhood memories. The key to the front and back doors was what daddy called a “skeleton key,” I guess because it had a thin back bone, a round head, and notched feet that unlocked the door.
Then there was the key to my grandfather’s 1932 Ford. That was key to the adventure of running boards, scratchy horsehair upholstery, and put-put-putting down the country roads at the speed of a tortoise. When my pastor-parents were out of town for a church convention or state board meetings, Grandpa and Grandma would drive into town to pick me up from school. I sat on the prickly back seat with my chin on the windowsill to watch the farmers plowing the fields or harvesting the crops. Sometimes a killdeer would limp away to distract us invaders from her eggs that she had literally laid in the edge of the road, where it was hard to tell the gravel from her small spotted eggs.
Daddy and mother had a “wad” of keys. I always wondered how they knew where they went. Some went to the church and its various doors; some went to not only our parsonage, but to my other grandmother’s mobile home, and my grandparent’s farm house, though they only ever locked the front door to their house. At the back door was a stoop where there was a bolt that went through a hole in the thick wooden door. The bolt had a string attached to it with a ring on the end, and the string ran through a wooden block nailed beside the door. The string with its ring hung in the corner beside the door where grandma propped a mop on its handle so the strands of the mop could hide the bolt string. We just knew to move the mop, grab the ring and pull; the bolt would slide out of the holes holding the door. Tight security!
Years later as a budding lyricist, I was to hear a song by Stuart Hamblen, one of the greatest songwriters of all time that had this line:
Each day is a measure on life’s little string;
When reaching its ending, tired eyes will behold
The string tied to the doorlatch of my Father’s house—
One day nearer home.
One Day Nearer Home
Stuart Hamblen
Hamblen Music Company, Inc. (ASCAP)
I knew exactly what that image meant, though Stuart didn’t mention the mop.
I had two treasured keys of my own, too: the key to my sidewalk skates and a tiny key to a diary I got for my birthday one year. The diary key was so small that I was afraid I’d lose it, so I kept it tied with a ribbon to my journal. What I wrote was never very secret-secure.
Ah, but my precious skate key! That one I kept on a cord around my neck. Every recess and noon hour, my friends and I would skate the sidewalks and blacktopped teachers’ parking lot around the school. Unless there was too much ice and snow, we skated. Skating was our passion! Skates for sidewalk skating had no boot, then, but clamped onto our saddle shoes; the key closed the clamps until they were tight. The skates also had a leather strap that buckled into place around our ankles to hold the skates in place.
Now, many keys later, the keys to my grown-up life hang on a key holder by our back door. One day when Benjy was small, one of his friends ask him why his parents had so many keys. “Because they have a lot of keyholes, I guess,” he answered. I think that is as good an answer as any. Gates, padlocks, ignitions of cars, trucks, busses, offices, golf carts, guest houses, utility closets, garages—all these have need of keys. Some have been there so long, we’re not sure what they go to, but we’re afraid to throw them away in case the keyhole is still somewhere in our lives.
Hearts and minds and souls have keys, too, and once you discover what that key it is and someone opens up to you, well, you just never throw away that key. Even though there may be spaces of time and distance when you might not have a chance to use it, you always keep a key and just wait for the day when you get a chance to use it again.
Here are the keys Saint Paul gave us—fruits of the Spirit, he called them. These are well made keys that never stick or get jammed, but open the strongest bolt locks smoothly and without force. These keys have names engraved on them. Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. How our locked up relationships need this fistful of keys!
Spring Cleaning
Spring is the time of new life. Wonder sprouting everywhere! Cleaning out the old to make room for the new is vital. In our house that means pulling out furniture from the walls, cleaning in places hidden by winter’s accumulation, dusting ceiling corners and getting rid of “stuff” in drawers and cabinets and pantries.
Mother taught me (and her mother before her) that anything can be cleaned with vinegar or soda. Surfaces cleaned with vinegar-water dry quickly and leave bacteria no place to grow. Soda can take out stains, sweeten any place mold might have grown and scour away stains.
It’s time, too, for what Bill’s Aunt Lillie used to call “riddin’ out.” Magazines, catalogs, newspapers and boxes saved for “someday” need to be taken to recycling centers. Extra flower pots, glass vases, and “fancy” jars can be put in some charity’s yard sale. Half-burned candles, silk flowers, extra dish towels, blankets, sheets and towels can find new uses at women’s shelters and missions where folks are trying to put together a life after tragedy or house fires.
Once the spaces of our lives are clean and neat, spring can happen even before the flowers are in full bloom. Spring colors in bedspreads, couch pillows, towels, dish towels, tablecloths and candles can turn a winter room to spring in no time and with minimal expense. Wicker baskets spray-painted white, yellow, pink or robin egg blue, then filled with clumps of silk daffodils, tulips or dogwood can accent a dining table, fireplace mantel or bedside stand. Colorful brightly-enameled metal gardening containers filled with forsythia and pussywillows adds spring sparkle to an outdoor entry or porch.
There are five senses: sight, touch, hearing, smell, and taste. I like to think of these as five roads into the center city of our souls, so I try to use as many of these roads as I can when I decorate.
A bowl of lemons appeals to the eye and the taste buds. A small fountain brings the sight and sound of a spring stream. Textures of soft pussywillow, a ragged piece of rock or shell, a container of sand, the smooth surface of polished stone or a piece of lace or other fabric entices the hand to touch. And music; don’t forget the music of spring. My favorite is Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and I love to have it playing in my clean, spring-sprinkled house when the family comes for dinner.
Soon I will add symbols of Easter and resurrection: a ceramic rabbit and her bunnies by the back door, a flowered straw hat over the fireplace, a soft lamb among the daybed pillows, some fuzzy chicks on the “children’s shelf,” a straw nest with five blue eggs by the flowers and candles on the kitchen island.
The extended family will gather here after everyone has changed from church clothes on Easter Sunday to watch the children search the hillside and creek bank for hidden eggs. Even the big kids love this family tradition. The rocking chairs on the porch will be lined with grown-ups taking pictures and cheering them on. (Our rule is that nothing low or on the ground may be “found” by the older children, but be left for the little ones.)
One of my favorite times of the whole year is the early morning hiding the eggs. I have them filled with prizes and ready to go the day before, but early morning hours are my private time. Watching the sun rise, hearing the ducks and geese and swans stirring and conversing on the pond, listening for the happy song of morning birds, I make my way to every corner of our property placing eggs where the children will find the most delight in the discovery. This is my personal sunrise service.
Finished, finally, with my mission, I sit for a moment on the old bench by the pond and think of that first Easter morning when the women made their way to the place where their Lord had been laid three days before. I listen for the voice in my own soul that declares to me that there is no death here; He is alive. He speaks. And I, too, say “My Lord, and my God!”
Revisiting Good Friday
Each year I re-read the story of the days before the Resurrection from the book of Matthew, just so see if I had missed anything. This year was no exception. I was reading the part in chapter 27 about Jesus on trial before Pilate, a story I had read and heard read since I was a child. I had followed the story from the Passover meal Jesus and his disciples had celebrated in the upper room, Jesus’s act of washing of the feet of the disciples to show them how a leader should serve, the breaking of the bread calling it his “body broken for them,” the taking of the hallowed cup from the table and the drinking of it and offering it to them as “the cup of the New Covenant...that your joy may be full.” I read Peter’s declaration of total loyalty and Jesus’s prediction that Peter would deny him three times before the break of dawn, of His then telling Judas to “do what you do quickly.”
I had followed the story through the agony of Gethsemane and the vision of just what was in the cup, remembering as I read, the songs we had written inspired by these verses and the whole musical (In the Gardens) about the broader story of redemption stretched like a banner across three gardens (Eden, Gethsemane, and the garden of the tomb). I read on through the actual betrayal with a kiss of Judas, Peter’s striking of the guard with his trusty sword and Jesus’ rebuke of this act, followed by the healing of the severed ear.
I followed the story from Gethsemane to the awful night of denial, flogging, shaming, and the mock crowning of “the King” with a crown braided of clippings from a cruel thorn bush by the soldiers guarding this “criminal.” I read again the proceedings of the so-called trial before Pilate and his questioning of Jesus, interrupted by the delivery of a note from Pilate’s wife. She had spent a restless night troubled by a dream and sent the letter asking her husband to have nothing to do with this innocent man.
Then came the part about Pilot’s tradition of releasing a prisoner on Passover, offering a choice between the serial criminal Barabbas, and Jesus. And about how the crowd, infiltrated by the chief priests and their cronies, having heard the offer, yelled, “Barabbas! Barabbas!” Exasperated, the account said, Pilate asked for basin of water to wash his hands of the whole thing. “See to it yourselves,” he had shouted, “I am innocent of the blood of this just man!”
Then came the line I had never really internalized before: “All the people answered, ‘Let his blood be on us and on our children.’”
I stopped reading. Illumination flooded my soul. This is the very prayer I pray for our children every day! What the clueless crowd that day intended as a condemnation and curse, was, ironically, a prayer! And this was exactly what Jesus was headed to Calvary to do—to cover with his blood the very lives of those and their children who were condemning him to the cross, so he could pour his love and his very blood back on every heart that would accept it.
No wonder the very guards that carried out His execution, as they had so many more, stood amazed at the end of that day and said, “Surely, this was the Son of God.”
This morning I prayed, as I always do, that our precious children and their children will know today that they have been covered by the blood of the One who came to show us what God is really like—that there is no end to this kind of Love, and that they have access to the power of it as they live their lives in a divisive and sometimes ugly world, bringing the healing of grace, forgiveness, and joy that only comes from something otherworldly.
And, yes, another song came from the Word’s inexhaustible source.
LET THIS BLOOD BE UPON US
Verse 1
Like the restless crowd that milled around the city,
Pilate’s wife tossed restless in her bed.
Was it fear or dread or was it pity?
She wrote an urgent note to clear her head.
Verse 2
The trial found no crime to charge the prisoner;
The angry mob still shouted their demand—
“Then you see to it!” weary Pilate answered,
“From my hands wash the blood of this just man.”
Chorus
Let this blood be on us and our children!
Let His cross cast its shadow over us.
Let this blood be on us and our children—
Let this blood, let this blood be on us.
Verse 3
What the clueless crowd once screamed in agitation
Is the prayer our trusting hearts breathe every day;
It’s our only hope and sweetest consolation:
Let the precious blood of Jesus make a way.
(repeat chorus)
Bridge
Let this blood be upon us; let this blood be upon us;
Let this blood be upon us; let this blood be upon us.
Let this blood be upon us; let this blood be upon us.
Let this blood, let this blood be upon us!
(repeat chorus)
Lyric: Gloria Gaither, © Hanna Street Music 2015
Music: Dony McGuire, © Rambo-McGuire Music 2015
