05/29/2016
ICE CREAM, SPRINKLERS, & SCRIPTURE
I can hear the motor whining now. I can see the orange chord running into the house. I can taste the cold, salty water barely seeping out of the tiny hole. We waited for homemade ice cream eager to fight over who would lick the paddle placed on a cookie sheet. Babies were made and born faster than homemade ice cream would freeze. It gave us time to dare siblings to hold their hands in the subfreezing water and chase each other with the ice pick. We contemplated pulling the cord from the plug inside to stop the motor early but didn’t because we regarded the process as sacred. If God would strike a man dead for trying to catch the ark and cheat on tithes, then I thought He might at the very least shock a kid prematurely cutting the motor off on a batch of ice cream.
The anticipation of the soft pineapple cream that would soon give us brain freeze pushed us to the edge of civility. Like animals foaming at the mouth, we circled waiting for it to die. It would stutter as if it was giving up the ghost and our eyes lit up like it was our birthday. We attacked it with bowls and spoons like cattle at a trough of fresh ground grain. And then as quickly as it started it was over. We were asleep.
Some fell asleep on the couch, some in soft chairs, and the rest of us on the rug. We were all in a homemade ice cream coma. Shiny shoes from church and Sunday papers were scattered all over the living room with bulletins and Bibles. The window unit in the kitchen purred like a groomed cat sending us deeper into our daze. The drool fell from our mouths onto our Sunday clothes as our pie holes stood open in awe at the goodness of God. This was our Sunday afternoon ritual when the temperatures flared and the humidity of hell descended upon us.
Sometimes we startled from our sleep and wandered out into the heat and hooked up a garden sprinkler to a hose. We had a well and the water was so cold it felt like getting hit with a piece of barbed wire until your skin went numb. We screamed and dared one another to run through it like it was a roaring fire. Eventually we removed the sprinkler and chased each other with the hose like it was a snake with deadly venom. Our time of torture would come to an abrupt end when my mother would eventually emerge from the house to tell us we were using too much electricity and needed to stop. It cost like five cents an hour to run the well. The reality was she knew we were watering the grass that she hated to mow.
But we also had something else we had to do before six o’clock; we had to memorize some scriptures. We had Bible drills on Sunday nights at church. We learned the books of the Bible, how to find them, and memorized key passages. We had to learn twenty-five verses and ten key passages a year. At the time I did it for the reward of cookies and Kool-Aid rather than devotion to God. But it doesn’t matter why you plant a garden, it just matters that you plant it.
I am well aware now that out of all I ever learned it was the foundational truths of Scripture that served me the most. Yes, I have occasionally used some Algebra and even some Calculus but nothing has helped me find the answers that really matter more than the Word of God. This Biblical worldview I acquired may not be poplar today but it has allowed me to reconcile reality with a loving God. My textbooks told me I evolved from a monkey. My Bible told me God knit me together in my mother’s womb and He has numbered the hairs on my head and counts my tears in a bottle. My textbooks told me there were great men in history like Napoleon and Thomas Edison. My Bible told me there were great men who were faithful, who tamed the mouths of lions, who were stoned, who were sawn in two, and who the world was not worthy of. Textbooks made no mention of how to love or really how to live. My Bible told me how to do both. Textbooks told me we had wars. My Bible told me what was worth fighting for.
One key passage I remember is, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?” The little seeds of scriptures I memorized on Sunday nights have held me accountable, convicted me of wrongs, and restored me in times of despair. They have not given me a perfect life but they have both helped me in this imperfect one and given me hope of the eternal one to come. They have served me like a pair of glasses. The more I have worn them the more clearly I have seen. And greater yet, they have given me not only a vision for my own life but have helped me see great things in other people I would have never seen.
Forty years ago I thought Heaven would have homemade ice cream on tap and sprinklers with warm water. I saw it as a place that would give me everything I ever wanted but as those seeds matured I began to see it as a place where there is a Person that gave me everything I have ever needed. My life has been blessed and has always been full of giving people. Eventually, because of their investment, I will see the One who gave it all. And one more scripture from memory for all the tired parents out there:
“Do not grow weary in doing good, because in due time you will reap a harvest, if you do not give up.”
