GROWING SEEDS: "The Monday after THE Sunday"

It's the Monday after THE Sunday.  Easter Sunday. 

And everyone has moved on.  

No more talk about Jesus dying....and the day droplets of blood fell with each of our names on them from his body.  No more Easter eggs filled with coins, chocolate bunnies and a bizarre game called Chubby Bunny, and I woke that Monday-after-the-Sunday wondering what, in this world, Jesus was doing the Monday after He rose.  

As for me, I was planting impatiens and picking up glazed donuts for my friend Pam and myself....a tradition we do most every-other-Monday.

Pam talked of how her late husband, James, never had much to do with church.  "He'd just as well spit in a fire than go to church", she said.  But one day a new preacher came to town....a preacher determined to bring Jesus to her husband James even when the deacons of her little church shook their heads and told the new preacher he was wasting his time.  

So each week, this new preacher would show up outside the barn where James spent much of his days, and ask him when he thought he'd make it to church.  And James would assure the new preacher he'd better not hold his breath.....and yet, each passing week, the new preacher continued to stop by James' barn....to help him change a clutch on the tractor......or birth a calf......and asking him when he reckoned he'd make it to church.

This went on for over a year.  Then one Sunday....and it wasn't even Easter.....James got up, put on a suit and drove to church with his wife Pam.  The next week he did the same.  He never stopped.  And a few months later, James made the long walk down the aisle to the front of the church and accepted Jesus as his Savior.  Pam said there wasn't a dry eye in the place and everyone was rejoicing.  It had been a long journey for James to walk down that aisle, but the One who went looking for him, never gave up on him.  And much like the woman who had 10 silver coins and loses one in Luke 15, she "lit a lamp" (don't miss the symbolism of the Light)....searched and then rejoiced when it was found.  "She gathered her friends and family around her and they celebrated," my Bible says in verse 9.

Three years later, Pam buried James from cancer. 

Jesus says the whole community of Heaven dances the night away when each person figures it out, turns from their own ways and walks into God's arms.  I don't know about you, but I can just hear them rejoicing, "Thank God he's found; that was too much to lose."