by Kathy Brasby | Nov 19, 2013 | Hope
I admire those people who wrap their gifts with crisp corners and elegant bows. Those Christmas settings with deep red and green boxes under the tree, shimmering in style and beauty, inspire me.
I just can’t wrap like that.
When I get out the roll of wrapping paper, I can’t cut it straight. Plus, I end up with all this extra paper that gets hacked off. Yeah, it looks that way.
The idea is that I can turn the edges under and still have a nice gift wrap.
Huh. Somehow mine come out like they were first tossed under the delivery truck. Extra tape doesn’t help, either. I’ve tried that.
When gift bags came in vogue, I was all over that. Just stuff the tissue paper in there and I look like Martha Stewart, right?
Not right. I can’t stuff the paper elegantly, either.
My family has adjusted. On one of my husband’s birthday, the first gift came to him in a cute red “Happy birthday” gift bag. He fished out his gift, set the bag aside, and thanked the child responsible.
Then came his next gift from child #2 – in the red “Happy birthday” gift bag. Child #2 had snatched it, scurried to the kitchen and re-loaded it.
The birthday guy got four different gifts that evening in the same birthday bag. Talk about creative recycling on the run.
Some Christmas bags have been re-used so many times they’re part of the tradition. “Oh, you’re getting the Nutcracker bag. Who had it last year?” We use a marker to cross out last year’s name and add the current recipient to the list.
I may stop crossing out names because we’ve had so much fun recalling the bag’s history.
But my family has also descended to slap-your-hand kind of gift-wrapping. The operative question every birthday is, “Do you want your gift now or do you want it wrapped?’
We’re an impatient bunch. We accept gifts double-wrapped in Walmart bags. We snatch gifts from under a newspaper umbrella. We are happy to open a brown box – especially if the outside of the box doesn’t match the inside.
We figure the point is to disguise the gift as long as possible.
Just don’t tell Martha Stewart.
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 12, 2013 | Hope
We’d found a small church with many children and a huge box of donuts available before the worship service began. Our 5-year-old son thought we’d found heaven.
He had a free rein after Sunday school to play with his friends and sample the donuts.
When the service began, he joined us but, before the second song, he headed back out of the church. His father followed and found him in the bathroom, heaving his breakfast.
“Are you OK?” my husband asked.
He was. He washed his face, straightened his shoulders, and nodded.
“What happened? Are you sick?”
Our son shook his head. “No, I ate too many donuts.”
“How many did you eat?”
“Seven.”
His father laughed. “Wow. So did you learn anything from this little episode?”
“Yep,” he said. “Stop at six.”
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 5, 2013 | Hope
We were sightseeing on our last morning in Havana, Cuba after spending a week of meetings and travel.
All week we had seen El Morro lighthouse and castle across the harbor and finally we found time to visit.
From our hotel, we hailed a government-approved taxi which drove us in a nice little Russian car to the parking lot of El Morro and promised to return in two hours to take us back to the hotel.
Promised. No problemo.
The tour went great. The hosts inside were friendly and helpful.
We bought a few trinkets and then headed out to the parking lot to wait for our promised hotel.
Yes, we knew the chances of him returning weren’t great but we didn’t have a backup plan so we waited.
Then three young Cuban men approached us. “Do you want souvenirs?” They pulled out a silver coin. “See? Che Guevera coin.”
My husband, no great historian unless it involves World War II fighter planes, shrugged.
“He’s a great man,” the young man insisted.
“Not interested.”
So the three men stepped away but stretching your neck and looking far down the street is probably a universal language. They quickly deduced we were waiting for a car.
“Do you need a ride? We have car. Cheap ride. Only $10.”
We’d paid $6 for the government-approved ride over so my husband wasn’t paying $10 to these guys. They tried to negotiate but finally agreed on $6.
The windows of the car were all rolled down and the driver rushed ahead to open the door. That was because you couldn’t use the outside handles. Clue one.
We climbed in and buckled up. There were no liners on the door panels and we could see all the rods running to locks and windows. We kept our hands to ourselves.
The little car scooted down the highway and then dropped into a tunnel under the harbor. As the car began to descend, the driver pushed in the clutch and turned off the engine. We coasted nearly to the other end of the tunnel.
I’ll bet he saved a tenth of a gallon of gas with that trick. Clue two.
He started the engine once gravity threatened to stall him, downshifted, and went right through a stop sign. I don’t know what the speed limit was but our driver obviously didn’t care. We did stay on all four wheels.
He cruised up to our hotel, double-parked out front in the narrow street, and shut off the engine again. Another tenth saved.
He jumped out to open our doors because apparently the inside latch on the doors needed a secret twist before they’d open.
We paid him. In that country, he may have just made half a month’s wages.
We’d just taken a unlicensed taxi ride with an illegal driver in a foreign country and we actually still had our possessions.
Travel is quite an adventure, isn’t it?
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by Kathy Brasby | Nov 1, 2013 | Hope
We’ve looked at the betrothal convention over the last two weeks. The first story containing a betrothal – that of Abraham’s servant seeking a wife for Isaac – also adhered most closely to the guidelines.
Other betrothals used many of the rules of the convention but tweaked the rules in a way that added to the meaning of the story.
The surprising betrothal is one that massages the conventions in unexpected ways to produce an unexpected conclusion.
In John 4, we read the story of the Samaritan woman. In the story, the hero – Jesus – goes to a foreign country and stops at a well. When a woman approaches, he asks for a drink of water.
The two engage in a conversation and Jesus then invites the woman to bring her husband to meet him. She then has to confess that she has no husband. This tweaks the betrothal convention, which assumes a young maiden who goes to her husband.
In the John story, we don’t meet a maiden but a woman who has been married five times and currently lives with a man who is not her husband. She’s had a life of rejection in being divorced five times. It was usually the husband who divorced his wife and she had endured five rejections.
Jesus tells her about living water. Rather than drinking from the well water, he instead offers her something else: water that will well up into eternal life.
Although she doesn’t fully understand, Jesus’ words intrigue her enough that she hurries back to town, leaving her water jar behind.
She returns with many from the town and, as they listen to Jesus’ teaching, become believers.
Believers are often called the bride of Christ.
Although this betrothal story is a bit more nuanced, it uses the convention to convey a powerful meaning.
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by Kathy Brasby | Oct 29, 2013 | Hope
Having shed the toddlers with Grandma and watched our husbands head out to the race track, my sister and I decided on one of those freer-spirit moments we’re good at.
We decided this was a great time to try out some new scents at our local WalMart.
Lots of sample bottles littered the shelves but the fragrance doesn’t smell the same on the spray tip as it does on one’s skin. So we began by spraying a sample on a wrist. Then trying a different fragrance on the other wrist.
When there are over 30 bottles available to try, you run out of body places pretty soon.
We had scent on the inside of each arm, with new spots of fragrance from wrist to shoulder. We spritzed the tip of each finger and thought about trying ankles and knees.
Even for us, that was too weird.
So, not finding a scent that really wowed us, we moved on.
Far from the fragance aisle, I picked up a scent that I liked.
“Smell this one,” I told my sister. I had to thrust my forearm under her nose and slide the sample into place. She took a deep draw.
“I do, too,” she said. “I guess it took time to blossom. Let’s go get it.”
We headed back to the perfume section.
Sample bottles of fragrance do not smell the same in the bottle as on the skin.
Smart women would have kept a chart of fragrance and location on the arm so it would have been simple to connect the sample fragrance with the label. Not us. We sniffed and studied but never did find that magic scent.
I called us free spirits. I never said we were smart.
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by Kathy Brasby | Oct 25, 2013 | Hope
Last week we began a discussion about the betrothal genre in the Bible with some basic guidelines laid out. Then we examined the first betrothal – that of Isaac and Rebekah – setting the conventions in place.
The second betrothal is also found in Genesis but features a few tweaks to the guidelines – for a purpose.
Jacob, Isaac’s son, left his home and goes to a foreign land. There was no surrogate this time; Jacob was fleeing his brother’s wrath after deceiving him.
But the convention remains. Jacob went to the well to find his uncle Laban and there met Laban’s daughter, Rachel.
She was unable to draw water because of a stone blocking the well. So Jacob moved the stone for her and then watered the sheep. This slight variation on the convention could foreshadow the difficulties Jacob must overcome to actually marry Rachel- and even her difficulty in bearing children for him.
But the convention continues, for Rachel, after meeting Jacob, runs to her home. He eats a meal with the family and the betrothal is secured.
Although we were told immediately that Rebekah was beautiful, in this story we don’t learn of Rachel’s beauty until later – when she was compared to her sister Leah. The convention flexes here to give us understanding about the coming strife between the two sisters.
A third betrothal follows in Exodus when Moses, fleeing Egypt after murdering an Egyptian, arrived in a foreign land: Midian.
There he met the seven daughters of a Midianite priest – at a well where they had come to draw water. Moses had to drive off hostile shepherds before drawing water for the sheep, as the convention requires.
The girls hurried off to tell their father. Their father, Reuel, invited Moses to a meal and Moses was given Zipporah as his wife. All within the convention.
Next week we’ll look at a surprising betrothal story that used the betrothal conventions to an unexpected conclusion.
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