Happy Easter in Ice Cream
By Bobby Neal Winters
A vision can keep us together when nothing else will. A vision can foster Hope and Hope is one of the strongest forces there is.
In this year of COVID along with all of the unrest of the summer and the contentious presidential election, there was a vision that kept our small town together. It was the vision of a better town. It was the vision of a town that was better equipped to face an uncertain future. It was the vision of a town unlike any town the world has ever known.
It was the vision of a new Dairy Queen just south of the Sonic.
Jesus said there would be wars and rumors of wars. This was more like bulldozers and rumors of bulldozers.
“When are they going to start?”
“Have they started?”
“I think they are going to pull out.”
“I saw that they’d mowed the lot. I don’t think they’d’ve mowed the lot if they weren’t goin’ to do anything.”
“I saw a for-sale sign on the lot.”
I must admit, that when I heard the last one, I actually drove by the lot to see if there was in fact a sign, and there was...not!
Since then, every time I run up to the big WalMart to do a grocery pick up I look at the lot. A few weeks ago I was rewarded with the sight of actual bulldozers and actual dirt being moved. A hymn began to burst forth from my heart:
Believe me when I say that I look now every time I go by to gauge the progress.
In the 21st Chapter of the Book of Revelation, we are given something similar. It is a vision of a new heaven and a new earth and a vividly drawn picture of a New Jerusalem,”coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.”
There, John, the author of Revelation, is trying to describe his vision with the best words he has. He makes use of light as a metaphor. Light is symbolic of wisdom. In this new heaven and new earth they will use the light of Wisdom to guide themselves. John makes a statement that sounds like nonsense: “The Lamb is the light.” Had he been writing in English we would think he might’ve made a typo, writing Lamb for lamp. But as Christians, especially after Easter, we know that the Lamb is Jesus and that the wisdom of Jesus will be the light in this New Jerusalem coming down from heaven.
And it is here that another hymn bursts into my heart:
Even while there is that hymn in my heart, I have doubts like with the construction of the Dairy Queen. Is there anything happening? Is it going to appear in stages? There is so much evil in the world, why has he made us wait so long.
But in the vision is hope. Come, Lord Jesus!
Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )
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