SUNDAY BEST?

When I was a kid, the dress code for Catholic church was called your "Sunday Best". Probably for most other church kids, too.

Most Sundays nowadays, except for Easter and Christmas, the dress code at my fellowship would probably be called, 'Office Casual'. But among those of us over 40, the prevailing style still seems to be 'Sunday Best'. No one, though, seems to be concerned one way or the other . . . except maybe me.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that Sunday morning is my 'date with God'. This gets me out of bed and puts my focus on the real reason I'm going out . . . which is to 'double-date' with others who are (hopefully) attending to honor, to thank, and to celebrate our Awesome Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I see Sunday morning church as the real 'red carpet' event of my life; so I choose to 'dress to impress' the One whose arm I'm walking in on each glorious Sunday morning.

I was swooning about this 'date with God' a little during the announcements last Sunday when {wouldn't you know it} the Still Small Voice showed up to wonder why I'm not dating more . . . . . This particular lesson, I realized, started with that blushing "Bride of Christ" vision Father God favored me with at the beginning of this lovely Falling in Love Season.

I started thinking about other 'dates' I've been dragging God along on lately . . . like Saturday's rainy day date . . . where 'we' devour junk food in pj's and read graphic crime novels ad naseum. (I have five more of these tasteful thrillers lined up to devour even as I compose this convicting little essay.) When I had a television, date night was a Criminal Minds and Munchies Marathon. Thank God I can't afford much entertainment.

Somehow, I suspect my weekday 'date life' is in for some changes . . . I'll miss you, Grisham.

s t o p . . . and BE the roses . . . . . . .

The first day of Spring is my Born-again Birthday. How lovely is that, I ask you!?

It seems I have been on a second honeymoon for most of the month of March; and I confess our Wyoming weather was SO WONDERFUL last month that I had not one tickle or itch to spend time in front of a monitor. Hopefully, this was true for you as well, dear sisters and brothers; and you aren't too annoyed at my rather extended leave of absence.

When you have wandered (like me) empty, angry, and fearful in the desert 40 years before you let God interrupt your Damascus Road Disastrus, your spiritual birthday becomes far and away more significant than that old physical one. So celebrating this merciful event just as the first bud and blade turn blessedly green is my first gift from heaven each year.

The greatest joy of Spring is how it so sweetly, so superbly, so equisitely reveals the final, victorious scene in The Hope of Our Salvation. From parks and pastures of dull, dreary, seemingly dead soil spring the first miraculous promises of flowers, fruits, and fragrances. My faith in an invisible, gentle, piercing Power to ever renew ME grows newer, stronger roots each an every first day of Spring.

As I gaze out an open Bible fellowship window, I'm reminded of that old Mac Davis muse to "Stop and Smell the Roses." And in the next moment, on a whisper-soft Spring breeze, I hear from the Holy Spirit of our Risen Lord,

"You, my dear ones, are their roses."