Imagine this, you are in line at Wal-Mart, and while you pretend to be reading a news artcle, “Discovered: Alien Baby White Seals Are The Real Cause of Global Warming,” your eye keeps glancing over at the cart in front of
you. You want to ask… but you don’t. You want to stare… but you are afraid they’ll think you’re casing their items for a meeting in the parking lot, or the number on their credit card. The clerk starts ringing up their items… the soap, the dogfood, the latest edition of Wii fit, bread, motor oil, a new shirt, underwear, a casket, art supplies…. Stop! Yes I did say that! “A casket!” If you haven’t heard you can now by caskets from Wal Mart. They now cover your whole life from infant wear to suits with a slit in the back, baby beds all the way to “final resting place.”
Now that has got to put a different feel on the place; doesn’t it? You thought it was uncomfortable getting all those strange looks as you walk through the women’s underwear section (for men), spend a little time browsing in the coffins. And don’t even think about laying one on the floor so you can try it for size. Oh, and the pranks… someone sneak a rack of cough suppresant to the aisle, and, of course, hiding inside. Even the casual image of a shopping cart being pushed across the parking lot with a casket sticking out… that’s interesting.
Actually, sorry to get you practical joksters’ hopes up, you won’t be able to buy them in the store, or order them shipped to the store. They will only be shipped to your home. And… I guess that’s better. Pity the poor UPS man who goes into the back of his truck to find a delivery and sees his first casket… then rolling it up the steps of the house. The neighbors are all
coming out in tears, gathering around to mourn, wondering who it was. They are all thinking, “She seemed so young” and “Since when did they start making ambulance runs in a UPS truck?” Or you’re driving down the street in your subdivision of cookie cutter houses, and laying there by the front door of a neighbor… a casket. I dare venture it would have to turn your head for a moment.
So go ahead and get yours now, before everyone finds out and there is a big run on ‘em. After all it is the shopping season just ahead… this could be the “Tickle Me Elmo” of 2009. No sense waiting until the last minute. Buy one, set it on its end in your coat closet… that’ll set your guest back for a moment. (You might find them looking real close at your incisors and talking about “Twilight” a little more than the past.) Store it in the attic or basement… your serviceman won’t mind moving it when he needs. Or, you could take it out and use it. It looks like it would make a great coffee table; maybe a card table, or tv stand. Large crowd coming for a gathering? Line it with plastic, fill it with ice and canned drinks. Or build some temporary shelves, stand it on its end with a block of ice in the bottom and its an old time “ice box.” [Part of me wants to say "spare bed," but that one even gives me a chill.]
The truth is we are a little taken back with Wal Mart being so comfortable with death. Yet, if you want to sell a product that reaches a lot of people? Not everyone needs toys, sporting goods, and gardening supplies… but the odds of dying are 1 out of 1. Someday everyone will come to see you at the front of the church. Until Jesus comes, “death” and “births” are neck and neck in the list of universal experiences. (One piece of good news… on the very last day, “birth” is going statistically blow “death” out of the water for the “most common human experience.” Birth had a slight lead until Jesus kept messing up funerals and letting folks die twice… but its got a big finish in mind.)
Even though dying is one of the “basics” of living, we would just as soon keep it just out of sight, where we don’t see it, and can’t feel its chilly breath. And yet, if we brought it closer, we would see something amazing. Death is the aged boxer. At one time it seems he could rip your head off your shoulders with one blow… but now his punch would hardly unsteady your feet. The flame of life may sway a little, but the wind of death can’t put it out. Death has lost its sting… “lost its punch” (I Cor. 15:55-56, Holman trans.) We will walk through the doorway with hardly a jostle. Satan screams at us to be afraid of dying…and at times we all shudder; but Satan lies. Jesus says, the mortal will be released and we will put on immortality. It’s what comes after death…that is the issue.
For those in Jesus, the tattered tent we wander around with in this world will be tossed aside and be replaced with the luxury and beauty of a temple (Paul). The book of our lives, tattered and frayed, will find itself released in a new edition, one revised by it’s publisher.
I love these lines from Pilgrim’s Progress…
Now I further saw that betwixt them and the gate was a river; but there was no bridge to go over: the river was very deep. At the sight, therefore, of this river, the pilgrims were much astounded; but the men that went with them said, “You must go through, or you cannot come at the gate.”
The pilgrims then began to inquire if there was no other way to the gate; to which they answered, “Yes, but there hath not any, save two, to wit, Enoch and Elijah, been permitted to tread that path since the foundation of the world, nor shall until the last trumpet shall sound”.
“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” 1 Corinthians 15:51, 52
The pilgrims then – especially CHRISTIAN – began to despond in their minds; and looked this way and that, but no way could be found by them by which they might escape the river. Then they asked the men if the waters were all of a depth? They said, “No”; yet they could not help them in that case, for said they, “you shall find it deeper or shallower as you believe in the King of the place.”
They then addressed themselves to the water; and entering, CHRISTIAN began to sink. And crying out to his good friend, HOPEFUL, he said, “I sink in deep waters, the billows go over my head; all his waves go over me.”
Then said the other, “Be of good cheer, my brother; I feel the bottom, and it is good.” Then said CHRISTIAN, “Ah! my friend, the sorrows of death have compassed me about; I shall not see the land that flows with milk and honey. And with that a great darkness and horror fell upon CHRISTIAN, so that he could not see before him; also here he, in great measure, lost his senses, so that he could neither remember nor orderly talk of any of those sweet refreshments that he had met with in the way of his pilgrimage. But all the words that he spake still tended to discover that he had horror of mind, and hearty fears that he should die in that river, and never obtain entrance in at the gate; here also, as they that stood by perceived, he was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had committed, both since and before he began to be a pilgrim …. HOPEFUL, therefore, here had much ado to keep his brother’s head above water; yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then ere awhile he would rise up again half dead…. HOPEFUL added this word, “Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole “; and with that CHRISTIAN brake out with a loud voice, “Oh, I see him again! and he tells me, ‘When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee’”. Isaiah 43:2
Then they both took courage, and the enemy was after that as still as a stone, until they were gone over. CHRISTIAN therefore presently found ground to stand upon; and so it followed that the rest of the river was but shallow. Thus they got over.
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“What do you want to be like when you grow up. little girl?”
“Alive!” (from The Singer by Calvin Miller)
Jon Michael Cooper is the photographer who credits himself with starting the trend. It seems all over brides are posing for one final set of pictures in their wedding dress. The beautiful gowns, cherished memoirs of such a wonderful day are the foreground for abandoned houses, emty factories, salvage yards, etc… The brides are in their dresses laying in creek beds, wallowing in the barn mud, or just as some demented painter’s pallete of strewn primary colors. When asked about it,
the reasoning was, “Oh, the dry cleaners can get it out!”
; the honorary matrimonial tight-wads. Hey, and a word in praise of grooms. We often make cartoons of these love struck adolescent males who just say “yes dear” to the bride (and “keep it short to the minister”), but you don’t see any trend for “Trash That Rented Tux.”







people actually reacted once they got here, or what they said. Facebook lives on, and it seems will be with us for a long time.

room; so to hit the snooze you have to catch it first. The images of a couple of 18 year old guys, half asleep, crashing into each other and everything else, chasing their clock through the clutter of a college dorm room… that’s funny.


thriving beachfront communities of Greenville, Mississippi and Conway, Arkansas, and had just this year celebrated putting his head underwater on purpose, I was curious. Hey, there could be something about the Mississippi River I didn’t appreciate… Lake Chicot on a windy day?… Lake Conway-riding a wave, dodging tree stumps and trout lines would be some skill.
buried there were worried to death about sharks. What were we ever going to do!!!? On Sunday evening we all gathered around a documentary on what to do should you ever be attacked. One fellow’s angst boiled over, “You don’t think a big one could make its way up the North Canadian River and be in one of our lakes do you?” Aaaugh!!! (My apologise to those who do not live in the OKC area and have not seen the North Canadian, you are only getting half the joke.) We were planning our lives with one goal in mind… don’t get eaten by a Great White!




ecstatically. The paparazzi had captured her exhuberance and excitement as she held out her car window two tickets to the Michael Jackson memorial. At least she could have mourned.


