stuff i think

Back at the ranch…

We rolled in to the old home fort about 6:30 pm. While Kelsey sorted mail and I unloaded the truck, the boys ran off to find all of their belongings that were not able to make the trip to DC with us. We have been gone approximately 220 days…far shorter than Earnest Shackleton’s expedition, but nearly as exciting.

After a quick dinner we got the boys settled for bed. Kelsey went to check email and I sat down to write a few thoughts. I finished a moleskine tonight – a very fitting cap on this segment of our lives. It gave me great satisfaction to write the final entry and close the cover…especially knowing that I’d stashed a new one in my backpack. I immediately got it and wrote my name in it. On the exterior, they look the same - 13x21 cm, black cover, elastic band and silk page mark – but the older one contains the depths of my soul, at least between May 17th and September 12, 2005. The new one excites me. I wrote my name and contact info in it like Andy scribbled his on the bottom of Buzz Lightyear’s spaceboot. I resisted the temptation to start an entry. I’ll save that for tomorrow when I may have something to say.

Don’t tell anyone this – and I’m only telling you so that you know how to pray – but I suspect my computer and phone are having marital problems. I’ve been trying to sync them for about thirty minutes and they’re just not communicating. Bluetooth insists they’re paired, but to the naked eye, it would appear not.

I spent some time in John 2 this evening and found myself grinning at Jesus. We have simplified him so, primarily to make our Vacation Bible School songs rhyme and our stories to end in fifteen minutes…but this is one complex man. I’ve always had an impression of him seeing the money changers in the temple and temporarily loosing it, yelling, upending the tables, etc. To me, if it were a crime, he could have pleaded temporary insanity…except that the whole thing was calculated.

John 2:15 tips us off. “So he made a whip out of cords….”. He didn’t go postal – he took a few minutes and prepared a tool to make the maximum impression. I can imagine the disciples asking him “What are you doing with those cords?!?”

“You’ll see, Simon Peter. Here. Hold my keys for a second….” Scripture says that it was much later when the disciples put two and two together, remembering the scripture from Psalm 69:9 that promised “Zeal for my house will consume me.”

My theory is that Jesus did this as an object lesson, knowing they’d connect the dots later – much later. He knew exactly what he was doing and took his sweet time in doing it.

Once it was over, the enraged religious leaders demanded a sign to prove his authority. Jesus – the one that all the great thinkers of the world tell us is such a good teacher, answered in the most cryptic way possible. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again.”

Of course, they misunderstood. He knew they would. But he also knew that his disciples would ‘get it’, albeit much later, when he rose from the dead after three days.

This great teacher – this complex man – was continually seeding the minds of his followers with a seeds of understanding that wouldn’t fully bloom until months and even years later. Even when he was confusing most people, he was teaching them. While most of us will do anything to be understood hear and now, He invested his effort in maximum impact toward the purpose of launching a revolution in the spirit of man. He was willing to be misunderstood now if it meant being respected and honored later. He personified – even deified – delayed gratification.

This is not an ordinary man. I must know him better.