No Keys

There is much to say. We leave for Kenya in the morning. We have said goodbye to almost all our family and friends. Sometimes the big picture is a little too hard to grasp, but maybe an instructive small picture would work instead.

I have no keys. For the first time since I was about 14 years old. Our house keys and garage door opener have been mailed to Michigan. Our last car is sold. Our work keys were turned back in. The only thing left on the ring is a Kroger tag, and a bike lock key to a lock that we can't remember.

There will be new keys, but for now, nothing. What is it that's said? We empty ourselves so that we can be filled. We die so that we can be born again. "Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies..." It is the undressing before the redressing. All of the locked places of the world are now barred to us.

Maybe this is over dramatic, but the moment feels very dramatic. I've heard it said that early Christians were baptized in rivers, and that as they went under the water, they shed their old garments, and a new clean garment was placed on the surface of the water. As they rose from their baptism, they were clothed again.

And so I return to the newness that is all in all. The life and light of men that draws us to do strange things, but strange things that lead to life and light. Amen.