"Transition......"

My oldest daughter turned forty-seven yesterday. I remember holding her the day after she was born, her head in the palm of my left hand, the rest of her tiny body resting on my forearm. The Navy had me under orders to be in Seattle, Washington on the fifth of June, so I handed her back to her mother, kissed them both, and then drove across country from northern Kentucky in less than two days. I was twenty-three. Leaving was the hard part. Forty-seven years later, not only does such distance fatigue me, every now and then, along the way, somebody has to remind me just where it is that I’m going… The music in the early service Sunday morning was fast-paced for the most part, the lyrics of one particular song speaking of how one wanted, in response to having been set free, to “worship, jump, and shout a little deeper, higher, louder than before”. It’s Pentecost. We don’t just mouth the words. Our enthusiasm is expressed in a number of ways, in order, but nonetheless most certainly allowing for believers to manifest the truth of what they are feeling. Four decades ago, I always wanted to be seated “up front where the fire was” and on the aisle, not “sewed up in some pew”. Who could just sit when the Holy Ghost was moving so strongly in our midst? Let me walk. Give me freedom to be one with the flow. Nowadays, my involvement is rare and more contained, this old body not as physically agile as it once was; but, admittedly, the change has more to do with my mental attitude than it does anything else. Just because it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck doesn’t mean it is a duck. Hopefully, that’s wisdom gained, not just me off on a tangent……