PRIES EGGS

Both of my parents were born on a farm, so I never understood why they cared when I left doors open. “No I wasn’t born in a barn, but YOU were!” They failed to see the humor or relevance in that, so to this day I shut doors (and turn off lights). My dad’s parents lived on a farm (east of Shawnee, out in the country) until the day they died. There were always lots of cats and chickens running around and of course a dog or two. Not inside the house, but outside, in and out of barns and living beneath the sheds. To this day, I’m an ‘outside dog’ person, much to the chagrin of my kids, especially my son.

My grandmother always warned me to stay away from the hens because as she put it, “they’ll flog ya!!!” I never knew what that meant, but it didn’t sound good, so I stayed away from them (did that suddenly sound like Andy Rooney?). Their backyard was basically like the barnyard in Charlotte’s Web, so it was a fun place to play. It was a safe haven for the animals, and other than that slight ‘flogging’ risk, a safe place to run around and be a boy.

When I think of Easter, my mind takes me back to that farm. My grandmother always bought Easter baskets. The kind you find at Wal-Mart and Walgreens now, but were found then at the TG&Y and the Woolworths five and dime stores. They were packed full of goodies and candy and I looked forward every year to that trip to the farm. I was her only grandchild for over a dozen years, so she didn’t have to buy a bunch of baskets…just one lollapalooza sized basket that I got to enjoy. (Yes, you can call me spoiled. I prefer to use the adjectives ‘privileged’ or ‘blessed’.)

The town of Shawnee always had a huge Easter Egg hunt at Woodland Park the Saturday before Easter. Mostly they gave out those nasty tasting, baby-powdered textured eggs that were hardly worth chasing after. But spread throughout the grassy field there at the park, were ‘prize eggs’ and one year in particular, the prize that awaited you when and if you found one was in fact a live, brightly Easter-Egg-colored baby chick. When the gun sounded, the kids spread out willy nilly across the park, trying to locate a ‘prize egg’. Naturally, a large throng of kids headed right down the middle, and although there would be a certain amount of jostling and jockeying for position going on there, I followed, knowing that the majority of the eggs (both prize and otherwise) would be there and I was willing to deal with the eggs-tra resistance to get what I wanted (He who pries the most eggs gets the most prize eggs!). Sure enough, I found not ‘one’ prize egg, but THREE prize eggs, and left for home that afternoon with three baby chicks, a purple one, a green one, and a blue one (aka: Larry, Moe and Curly). Our small tiny bathroom in our small tiny house on East Wallace became the new home for those little chickens. What a mess! I honestly don’t remember going to any more Easter Egg hunts after that, and I can only guess why.

I’ll spare you the details, but before long it was decided that the best place for Larry, Moe and Curly was my Grandparent’s farm. After all, they’d have more ‘peeps’ to mingle with (now c’mon, you gotta love that line ;), and would have lots of room to run and play. Besides, each day, new feathers were coming in, and they were quickly losing their color (and their cuteness); and my parents were quickly losing their patience.

What I didn’t realize was the farm was not nearly as safe a haven as my young naïve self had thought it to be. In fact, to my horror I learned (from my Grandfather) that the ‘coons’ had been ‘getting’ some the chickens. Now as a young six year old I didn’t really know what the ‘coons’ were, but imagined them to be a cross between the ‘big bad wolf’ and the ‘flying monkeys’ from the Wizard of Oz; certainly not sweet little Rory Raccoon from Saturday morning cartoons! And alas, within a few weeks, I found out that Larry and Curly had indeed been snatched up by these mutant killer beasts, dying a horrific death that I could only imagine in my nightmares. To make matters worse (and to finally end this blog), I found out during one Sunday lunch at Grandma’s, that when I asked for ‘mo chicken please’, I was indeed getting ‘Moe Chicken’! The explanation was simple: rather than let the ‘coons’ get him, Grandma had gone ahead and fixed Moe for lunch; and in my strange ‘lesser of two evils’ mentality, having Moe for lunch seemed fitting (and darned tasty).

So I pose the Easter question: Feel safe in church? I look around at the number of pastors who have been devoured and the number of church splits and fallen members we see littered across the backyard of the bible belt and it certainly causes me to pause. Why does the raccoon head towards the henhouse? Why do the spoiled little kids head to the middle of the park? Why did the chicken cross the road? (Ignore that last one.) The barnyard is where the chickens are. The lush, grassy center of the park is where the prize eggs are. Here is the church. Here is the steeple. Open it up and see all the people.

1 Peter 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

The devil wants to serve us up for Sunday lunch. No need for him to go anyplace else. He can head straight for the church, jump right in the middle of the flock and watch the feathers fly (like a roaring lion or a Rory Raccoon).

As Larry, Moe and Curly would say, “the NOIVE o’ dat guy!!!”

TILIKUM

Most of us haven’t had the opportunity to study Greek. We will acknowledge that we know the word ‘agape’ but we will emphatically deny that we know the word ‘pornos’ (but I digress). Here’s a word you probably don’t know. The word is ‘tilikum’. It means ‘friend’. All of us have friends and they’re pretty easy to spot. We hang around them. We text them. They pop up on our ‘facebook’ wall. Jesus in fact called us His friend (John 15:15). Unfortunately, in many of our lives, He’s not that easy to spot (but I digress again). We have good friends and bad friends. In tough times, our friends will rally around us and support us. But during day to day living, we just hang. And it is during this most common, sharing of lives, when our friends affect us both positively and negatively.

As parents, we concern ourselves with the friends our children have. To quote the great old Coasters song: “Tell your hoodlum friends outside, you ain’t got time to take no ride!” We try to put our children in the best schools, the best neighborhoods, and get them to church so that they surround themselves with positive influences so that their lives are filled with good ‘tilikum’.

As Christians we try to do the same. Some of that is out of our control for example, like the jobs we take or even where we can afford to live (but I digress for the last time). Some of the ‘things’ we surround ourselves with don’t start out as friends. In fact we know we “ain’t got time” and shouldn’t be taking a ride with them, but we figure we’re strong enough and hip enough (“your daddy’s hip he knows what cooks”) to handle it (wow, I’ve covered about four blog topics so far). But before long, we’re full blown ‘tilikum’ with them and these ‘things’ have become a part of our inner ‘tilikum’ circle and can really be a huge negative influence on our lives (finally I’m getting to the point).

Many of you may have figured out by now that ‘tilikum’ is not a Greek word at all (put the Strong’s down and step away from the Concordance) but is actually a Chinook word (Native American). And if you’re really up on your news stories, you’ll know it’s also the name of the Killer Whale that recently killed its trainer, Dawn Brancheau. Many of the more cynical among us has probably remarked, “There’s a reason they call them Killer Whales, people” and with a ‘that’s what you get’ attitude we watched the news stories in hopes of seeing the poor lady take her final swim. When we realized there was nothing to see, we switched channels. But let’s wade in a little deeper (pardon the pun).

There were some basic rules (commandments). One of them was you don’t get in the water and lay around with the 12,000 pound whales. (After all, “Where does a 6 ton whale sleep?”) No doubt, early in her career, Dawn followed the rules. I’m sure she was also very cautious and felt like she could “handle the truth” (or handle the girth). But in the end, her guard was relaxed, her diminutive body cuddled up next to this huge danger and without warning, according to some reports, Tilikum grabbed Dawn’s ponytail and drug her under the water.

Here’s my point and it’s pretty simple. Casual sin, habitual sin can easily become a friend. Familiar and comfortable…but still just as ‘killer’ as it was when we looked at it from the stands or were first introduced to it. Are you palling around with an old sin? Have you gotten really ‘friendly’ with something that years ago you wouldn’t even hang with or were afraid of? Is there a ‘Tilikum’ in your life??

Maybe it’s time to get out of the water!