Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Dave's Deep Thoughts - Remembering JFK


Here's Pastor Dave McDowell's weekly devotional that he sends out to members of his church. Dave is my brother and serves as the Music Minister at Stewartstown UMC in PA.

Sometimes, things change over long periods of time.
Sometimes, they change in a moment.

We had just returned from our afternoon trip to the cafeteria.
That's what we did in 1st grade.

At 1:45pm every day,
Miss Trout's 1st grade class lined up
and marched to the cafeteria where for a nickel,
one could have the choice of white or chocolate milk.
(That was one of the easiest choices a 1st grader could ever make.)

After a wonderful five minutes of ingesting chocolate milk,
the class would march back to our 1st grade room,
 the last room at the end of the hallway on the right.

The windows offered a wonderful view of the countryside.
It was very easy for an 1st grader's eyes to wander to the outside,
 especially during reading.

I remember the weather that day.
It was a typical late November day temperature,
about 55 degrees, but unusually foggy that day.
I remember that we weren't able to go outside for recess that day.
The weather seemed to foreshadow what we were about to learn.

It wasn't very long following milk break
that I found myself back at my seat.....
 3rd row, 2nd seat from the window.

There are many things that a 1st grader hopes for,
one of which is that you are never seated
next to the girl who pees in her pants.
I must have been the most unlucky 6 year old in the world.
She sat in the 3rd row, 3rd seat from the window.

But it wasn't my next door neighbor's urinary habits
that I remember that day,
Friday, November 22, 1963.

The clock read 2:05pm when the principal walked in the room.
Usually, it meant someone's parent was in the office
needing to pick them up early from school.

But today was different.
I had never seen that look on the principal's face.
Although a 1st grader would not have had the vocabulary to describe that look,
everyone in the room knew something was wrong,
very wrong.

Fifty years later, this 56 year old
would use the vocabulary word, devastated,
to describe our principal.

It was the five words that she spoke
that changed our world...

The president has been killed.

She said more.
I wasn't sure where Dallas was
but I knew it didn't matter.

As a 1st grader,
 I didn't have the resources
to understand the impact of such an event,
but as a 1st grader I knew that the world was going to be very different,
especially during the next few days.

After she said those five awful words,
we prayed.

Not individually.
We prayed as a class.

That was not unusual in 1963.
We prayed every morning
right after we said the Pledge of Allegiance.
Praying as a class was a natural thing.

Another reminder of how the world has changed in fifty years.

I am not sure what we did for the last 60 minutes of school,
but for Miss Trout,
it had to be the longest hour of her teaching career.

The bus ride home was completely quiet,
Another confirmation that the world had changed.

I remember the black and white television was on constantly
throughout the weekend.
All THREE stations were carrying the unfolding events.
I had never before seen Walter Cronkite cry.

For this fifty-something year old,
those "where were you" moments include
the first step by man onto the moon's surface,
the assasinations of MLK & Bobby Kennedy,
the space shuttle explosion,
the twin towers falling.

Life is peppered with those moments,
some are shared by a nation and a world,
others are much more personal.

Those moments change and shape us.

The moment you say, "I do,"
the birth of a child,
the death of a loved one,
the news that the cancer has progressed.

For a Christian,
there is that moment that stands above all other moments,
the moment when one's heart is converted to God's heart.

Sometimes, the change happens in a moment.
Sometimes, the change occurs over time.

The older one gets,
the more one realizes the significance of each life changing moment,
none more important than the day
you become friends with God.

Most people, especially nice people,
 don't realize that they are in rebellion to God
until they realize the need for His mercy and grace.
And that's when life changes forever.

If you are old enough,
you might be asked the "Where were you then?" question this week.

Take time to be sure you know where you were
when you became friends with God,
so that your "where were you"
also gives you the assurance of
"where you will be."

In can happen,
in a moment.
Just don't wait until it is too late.

"And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteous,
and he was called the friend of God."
                                                 James 2:23

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