I had to have a donut - you know, those little, white powdered sugar Dolly Madison Little Gems. A few of those and a couple of cups of coffee - my ideal breakfast.
I am a real health nut.
(You would think a guy who barely survived a bout with cancer and a bone marrow transplant would be a little more health conscious!)
So I just had to make a run up to Jewel. It’s a good thing the grocery store is only a few blocks away - I am there at least once a day. I am not one for planning menus ahead of time. I can barely come up with an idea for dinner that day, much less a week from now. How am I supposed to know what I am going to be in the mood for Friday when it’s only Monday morning?!
The kids are no help either.
“What sounds good for dinner?”
“I don’t know.”
Sheesh!
And then when I DO come up with something - they gripe about it! “THAT! I HATE THAT!” ...and then they have two helpings.
So anyway...
8:00 this morning, and I had a major donut jones.
As I was yanking my cart out from the mass of carts jammed up inside the door at Jewel, I thought (uncharacteristically wisely) I might as well get something for dinner while I was there.... something I could make quick because I didn't have a lot of time.
Chicken... grab some chicken, and worry about what to do with it later. I got to the chicken cooler, and spotted a package of chicken thighs. "I can do those on the grill!" And for cheap, like less than $5 bucks.
So earlier this evening I am getting the grill ready and I think, "We can't just have chicken! If I am going to go to all the trouble of grilling chicken, I may just as well go all out; fruit salad (fruit cocktail mixed with miniature marshmallow and cool whip - my FAVORITE!), potato salad, baked beans... the works!"
Back to the store again!!! (I swear, they are going to put in a memorial check-out lane for me one day.)
As soon as the chicken got off the grill I hopped into the car and made yet another run....
BUT IT WAS WORTH IT!!!!!!
It was one of the best meals ever. I would have handed myself a major award!!
The chicken, sprinkled with kosher salt as it grilled, was magnificent. The sweetness of the fruit salad a perfect compliment to the saltiness of the chicken. The Bush's beans are the best, the potato salad was delicious.
“This is REALLY good!” I said.
(I know it may sound like bragging, but really it is more wonder that something I cooked actually turned out well).
And then I said, "I don't know how anyone can have a meal like this and not know that someone MUST have planned it that way!
“The world is filled with amazing, wonderful things for us to enjoy, it just HAS to be because someone wanted it that way. It can’t be an accident. It is so obviously a gift from God, to think anything else is just plain...
CRAZY!"
It really IS!!!!
This really is an amazing world we live in. It is filled with wonder and delight - chicken on the grill, sunsets, the smell of rain on a hot street, a big hug, the words “I love you” - so many incredible, spectacular things - Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory pales in comparison. The universe is so obviously a gift, to think that it all came about just by chance is just plain INSANE!
Life is a joy.
That just can’t be an accident. It can't be.
If the universe were an accident, the result of a colossal cosmic explosion billions of years ago, then it would just be this continual, indifferent physical process. Just stuff changing from one thing to another. That’s all. There would be no more joy in it than the joy your car's engine feels when you pour in some gas and turn the key. It just goes. That’s it.
(Though I would have to wonder how in the world something as complex as the jumble of stuff I see crammed under the hood of my car when I try to find the oil stick, how that could possibly have put itself together from some explosion billions of years ago.... but that is what some people want me to think!)
But no. Life isn’t an indifferent mechanical process.
Life is filled with joy!
Joy is just built into the very fabric of the universe. So much so, that it is only when things go WRONG - when things aren't right - that the joy fades. It is only when we get sick, or don’t do what we should have done, or do what we shouldn’t have, when we mess things up, that joy drains away.
But when everything is right, life is a joy!
What an amazing thing!
Which makes me think of two other things.
The first is, that just to be alive is such a gift, I should fall down on my knees every morning and thank the one who gave it to me.
(Which I literally did that this morning, got down on my knees at the foot of my bed and thanked God to be alive.... and then I went and stepped in a pile of poop left by one pet or another by my closet door. What a jokester God is!)
The other thing that comes to mind is that if life is a joy when things are right, then I should be about making sure that things ARE right. Every day I should be about making sure, first, that I am right with God; and then that I am right with the people around me; and then that I am right with the world.
What was I talking about?
Oh yeah, “The Da Vinci Code.”
All the controversy over the movie is kind of funny.
EVERYONE knows the secret! Everyone knows by now that the big mystery is that the Holy Grail isn't really the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper, but the idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had a kid.
It's like going to a big summer blockbuster, a real whodunit murder mystery - and there's a group of protesters from the (formerly) secretive society of the Brotherhood of Butlers outside yelling, "Unfair to butlers! Unfair to Butlers! Butlers aren’t murderers!"
Kind of ruins it.
Anyway, it’s been a while since I read “The Da Vinci Code,” and I was really into it..... until about half way through, when I began to see how silly the premise was.
The whole idea that Jesus had a kid is just plain CRAZY.
Sure, if Jesus was just some ordinary, red-blooded guy, and Mary Magdalene some hot chick, then maybe.
...and all of Christianity is built on a lie.
Which would be a problem. But if Jesus was just some guy, he was crazy. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, if Jesus wasn’t God’s son then he wasn’t a great teacher - he was nuts. When you go around saying you are God, unless you really ARE, you are crazy. So either Jesus really was the Son of God, or he was a madman.
But if Jesus was just some looney, then when they put him to death on the cross and buried him in a hole in the ground - he would have stayed there, just like the rest of us. The disciples would have run away and that would have been it. They would have kept their mouths shut so the same thing didn't happen to them. And that would have been the last anyone would have ever heard of the whole business.... IF Jesus was just some guy.
But if Jesus was just some guy - a crazy guy who claimed to be God's son - then his disciples were as crazy as he was. We know for a fact that these poor fishermen all died horrible deaths - Peter was crucified upside down, others were burned, or skinned alive. They all would have had to have been out of their minds to die that way if they KNEW it was all a lie, if they KNEW that Jesus didn't really rise from the dead.
THAT’S what’s crazy, to believe that’s what really happened.
But to a man, the disciples told a different story.
Three days after they were crushed at the sight of Jesus dying on a cross, three days after they buried his lifeless body in a hole in the ground, they were hiding behind locked doors in an upper room - just like they would have been if Jesus was just another man.
But then Jesus came to them. He was very much alive again - and it was no ghost as they might have first thought (and I might have too!). But no, they talked with him, he ate fish with them on the beach. And when Thomas doubted his eyes, Jesus said to him, “Touch your fingers in the holes in my hands, put your hand in the wound in my side.”
That was the story they died for telling. It was a truth so big, so powerful, they couldn’t deny it even to save their own lives.
But then, they also knew a bigger truth, that because Jesus rose from the dead, they would rise from the dead as well.
And it’s an undeniable fact that the world hasn’t been the same since.
Now The Da Vinci Code comes along and says it was all a lie.
THAT'S crazy.
Maybe the problem is that sometimes the truth is so obvious, or so simple, we have a hard time believing it - like "God loves us." We tell ourselves "It can't be that simple!", and then we start to over-think things, and make them way more complicated than they really are - and that's when you get muddle-headed stuff like “The Da Vinci Code.”
Which reminded of something Paul wrote to the Romans...
Now the righteous anger of God is turned against those who deny the truth. They have no excuse, for God can be clearly seen in everything that he has made. That is how God made it to be, from the very beginning his eternal power and divine character is revealed in all of his creation.
But even though the truth is right in front of their noses, the godless turn away. They do not praise God as he deserves, or thank him for all that he has given them. Instead, the light has gone out of their hearts, and their minds are filled with nonsense.
Thinking they are oh, so wise, they have become fools, trading the eternal power and glory of God for the empty, powerless creations of their own foolish minds.
Romans 1.18-23, paraphrased
That pretty much describes the crazy ideas in “The Da Vinci Code,” don't you think??
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