There Goes Jesus . . .

Like all families, we have a long list of humorous, endearing, and enduring (at least to us) family colloquialisms.  Like the time when the upstairs toilet was overflowing through the vent into the kitchen and 4 year old Kate rounded the corner, took one look at the puddle and the cascading water and exclaimed, “I guess I better get the hell outta here.”  Then there’s the time 5 year old Charlie asked, “Dad, who’s George?”   “What are you talking about,” I asked.  He responded, “You know at the baseball game when the trumpet goes ‘da-da-da-da-da-duh’ every one yells ‘George.’”  I laughed so hard I almost ran off the road as I explained that everyone was yelling, “Charge.” To this day, almost 20 years later, the Marczynski’ s  still yell for “George”  at  baseball games and whenever something breaks, someone will remark about “getting the hell outta here.”  We can also recite almost the entire scripts of “A League of Their Own” and a “Christmas Story,” lines of which pepper our everyday conversations, but that’s another story.

Rainbow over the Tennessee River by Charlie Marczynski

One of our more poignant family sayings came to mind the other day, when a couple of ambulances flew by me on my way to work.  When an ambulance would go by us we told the kids, and reminded ourselves, to say a little prayer for the people who hurt - “Jesus help those people.”  Like shouting “George” at baseball games, this little prayer has now become a habit.  One day, when she was around 5 or 6, our daughter Sarah announced, “There goes Jesus.”  Not paying much attention and forgetting all about our little prayer, I asked her, what she was talking about.  She replied, “Jesus just drove by in an ambulance on the way to help someone.”  It was one of those “out of the mouth of babes” moments.  We ask Jesus to perform all kinds of miracles in our lives, but sometimes we do not see him in the very people who are already trying to help us and others.  As far as Sarah was concerned, that really was Jesus driving that ambulance.  I was the one who didn’t see him.

There is an old story/joke that illustrates our inability to recognize everyday miracles.   The river was rising and the sheriff cars rolled through the town telling everyone to evacuate, but one man told them he was not leaving because God would protect him.  Soon the water reached the man’s house and the sheriff came by with a boat to save the man.  “No, no the man cried, I believe God will save me.”  The water got so high he finally had to crawl out on his roof, and a helicopter circled overhead with a life rope dangling down, but the man insisted, “God will protect me.”  Soon the flood waters rose so high that the man was swept away and drowned.  When he got to heaven, the man addressed God, “You put the rainbow in the sky and told Noah you would never let another flood destroy everything and I believed you, so why didn’t you help me during the flood and save my life?  God smiled and replied, “Who do you think sent the sheriff, the boat and the helicopter?”

So, If we go looking for miracles let’s make sure we don’t let the people who bring them to us drive right by.

Gotta go, I have to pull over, I hear Jesus coming down the street.