April Fool's Day

I didn't get to drive the munchkins to school this morning so I missed out on their April Fool's pranks. I bet they'll have a bunch of them in store for me this afternoon. I can't wait. Race, at 6, has become quite the little prankster! I'm all primed to squeal and giggle appropriately.



Have you ever wondered where the celebration of April Fool's came from? Some explain it as a relic of the Roman festival Cerealia which was held at the beginning of April. The mythology behind the festival is that Ceres' daughter was playing one day in meadows filled with spring sprouted daffodils when she was kidnapped by Pluto and carried off to the underworld. Her mother, Ceres, searching for her daughter, forever chases the echoes of her daughter's screams, but never finds her. Sad story, isn't it?



A devotional I read this morning compared the delusions and detours that filled Ceres' life as a result of following the echoes of her daughter's cries with the way we follow our culture's "echoes" in equally bewildering quests for elusive goals.



Springtime seems to awaken in nearly everyone a personal search for the freshness that is emerging from the surrounding landscape. Many hunger for romance. What's the old saying . . . "in the springtime a young man's fancy turns to love" ?


This is my granddaughter, Mallory, and her fiance, Mike in a field of spring sprouted daffodils. (lovingly photographed by her talented sister, Maggie). Do you suppose it looks anything like the meadow where Ceres' daughter was playing?




For some of the rest of us, Springtime awakens a longing for agelessness and the echoes for some fountain of youth call out to us. Our elusive search begins again. There seems to be something about the renewing landscape around us that makes us wish for an endless succession of fulfilling years.




Personally, I railed against aging for a number of years. Today (praise His powerful name) God has brought me to a place of almost embracing my aging. And, yes, I said "almost"! I am beginning to see the blessing of increased years.


I was born in St. Augustine, Florida and I've drunk water from Ponce de Leon's Fountain of Youth on a number of occasions. (It's nasty tasting water, BTW!) As believers, we are invited to drink from the fountain of living waters. We drink in the freshness of real life - abundant life. We live and breathe and have our being in Him Who IS Life. Spring time for us, speaks of resurrection - not dying.




I want to cease listening to the haunting echoes of TV ads that promise vanished wrinkles and eternal youth. Instead, I want to embrace my true identity in Christ. . . and my age is a part of that. I don't want to be an April Fool, chasing empty echos, no matter what time of year it is.

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am He,

I am He who will sustain you.

I have made you and I will carry you;

I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

Isaiah 46:4

No matter what your age or stage in life, don't you want to be sustained by the One Who made you? I sure do! As you enjoy the emerging spring around you this year, will you let it remind you of the new and abundant life Christ offers? Will you allow Him to teach you who you are in Him and embrace your true identity?