Some Epic Similes Back From Belize

Like a kite flying high and sometimes blown even higher only to then twist and swoop down closer to the ground to be drawn up and down repeatedly, so my early retirement days and weeks are marked with exhilarating feelings of joy in the security and freedom we experience so care-freely only to be drawn down again and again by the emptiness of any challenge to achieve anything of lasting worth for us and before God.                                                                         

                                                                                                        April 16, 2011

Like a farmer taking all of his produce to the market to sell- the good, the small, and the ugly- and being paid the full price for all his fruit, so the celebration at the church of our 20-plus years of service in Belize seemed the full pay for all of our service and more, both the dedicated as well as the halfhearted and weak.

Like children traveling eagerly to the zoo for the first time with growing anticipation the closer they get to the place of enchantment and excitement, so it is in my elderly years as I am nearing the transition to the next life with all its wonderful and exuberant possibilities of endless enchantment.                                                                                                            Sept. 8, 2012

Like a child excitedly roving all over in a day at a zoo, oblivious of the flight of time while the parent just wishes the “day” would end sooner but had no other course but to tag along the whole while, so I felt when we were at Walmart and she wanted to stay much longer than I did and there was little I could do to shorten our time there, but to just bide my time until she was ready to go.

Like a hungry small boy being called by his mother to wash up and come for supper, faltering over how to make his skin clean enough for his mother although he had washed himself many times and even taught others his age how to become clean, still doubting and wondering about himself whether he was really clean enough to please his mother who was preparing a special meal for him, did his best bath, so the retired man faltered around when he sensed God was preparing a heavenly banquet in his future, worried over his past habits and failures in which the stains of sin may still be clinging on him, never knowing if he had adequately cleansed himself of all unrighteousness and was ready to meet his maker, even though he had explained to many people how they can be cleansed by confession and repentance, did all he knew to do and finally resigned himself to the mercy and forgiveness of God.

Like a young man walking with his father along a road with multitudes of helpless, cold, and homeless, hungry people filling the ditches on either side of them, the task of helping them totally overwhelming for him to relieve them, pleads with his compassionate father to do something about it, SO WE CRY out to our Heavenly Father to relieve the suffering of mankind who can do little to provide for themselves as they suffer from natural and unnatural disasters, of weather, cruel governments and corrupt leaders, and terrorists, which we see daily on the media or closer and feel we and God's people are starkly unable to cope with the magnitude of the problem of suffering mankind- we cry out for God to act, as only He can.

Like a new mother relaxing in her bed, ecstatically doting over her new born with her mother by her side, but her mother is suddenly totally distracted by the dust around the doily on the night stand, so I felt as I was reading some of my favorite writings to my wife, who was suddenly totally sidetracked, watching the garbage man picking up our trash I had placed out for him, she totally lost from the scene of something of infinitely more interest to me.