Opening Day for the Red Sox – is there anything like it? More than just a sign that spring is actually on the way (yesterday’s snow aside), more than the promise of warm summer evenings at Fenway or listening to the game on the deck after dinner – on Opening Day every team and fan can say, “This could be the year….” The possibilities are wide open, there are no entries in the loss column, every pitcher has a perfect ERA, every batter has yet to make an out, no errors mar the statistics of any player.
Opening Day is a day of new beginnings.
Some recently celebrated another day of new beginnings, a day which has historically been called “Ash Wednesday.” Traditionally marking the first day of the church season of Lent, worshippers are reminded of the old saying “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, and called to use the 40 days before Easter to be intentional about turning their lives around, making a new beginning.
Which calls to mind that major league bats historically have been fashioned from northern white ash, because of this wood’s hardness, durability, flexibility, and “feel”. So maybe we could also call Opening Day, “Ash Friday”. And possibly remember that every day is a day where we have the possibility of making a new start, laying the regrets and mistakes of the past behind us, embarking on a new and better life here and now.
I recently read a sad, but all too typical, account of an elderly fellow who would walk his dog past a church every day, often escorted by someone who the pastor assumed was his wife. One day this woman was no longer with the man, and after several weeks without any sign of her, the pastor stopped the man and asked if that person was indeed his wife, and if so, what had happened to her. It turned out that she was his wife, and that she had died unexpectedly. Noting that this man had often paused in his walks and looked wistfully at the church, the pastor asked him if he might consider coming in sometime. “No,” he replied, “it is too late for me; I’ve lived all this time without faith I guess it is just too late for me now.”
He was dead wrong, of course. There is a simply terrible parable in the Bible about how unfair God is about this. Seems that the owner of a vineyard went to hire some villagers to bring in the crop, agreeing to pay them a set wage for the day’s labor. By noon he realizes he needs more people, and goes back and hires some more, and does this again at mid-afternoon. At the end of the day he pays off all the laborers at the same amount, and those who began at the break of day are mad that those who came to the vineyard late get the same reward.
It is just not fair, and thank God for that. Each day is a day of new beginnings, each day is Opening Day with all the possibilities for new life that go with it.
So, Happy Ash Friday!
Red Sox fans: click here for some Opening Day music! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqKHqWaTv9g
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