Saving the Best for Last
In the fall of 2006, I wrote a largely unknown song with the lyric, “I press my ear to Your chest to drown out the noise. To hear Your heart, to give Your word a voice.” When I say largely unknown, I mean virtually unknown, but still the intimacy of pressing my ear to my Father’s heartbeat was my favorite line of the song. After penning it, I took a little solo victory lap around my bus-garage-turned-office to offer thanks to Abba for access to His voice, His word, and His heart.
Pressing my ear up close to hear has its own 50-year old history. When I was a small brown girl, it was not uncommon for children of the early 70s to ride in cars without safety restraints, and my car rides were no exception. I vividly remember laying with my head in my mom’s lap in the front bench seat of her car as she drove. On the highway. Another favorite spot was wedging myself in the back seat dashboard with my ear pressed to the speaker, studying the mysterious lyrics of the 70s. I never understood Dylan’s opening line, “once upon a time, you dress so fine, threw the bunch a dime, in your prime, didn’t you?” And speaking of dimes, I thought 4 of them seemed a steep price when the operator interrupted the call to Sylvia’s mother to demand “forty cents more, for the next three minutes.” He just wanted to tell her goodbye, after all.
My unsafe rear dashboard rides were eclipsed only by our Saturday morning Pop Shoppe run. For those of you who know not about the glory that was the Pop Shoppe, here’s all you need to know: It’s a shop, or shoppe, if you will, where you fill a red plastic flat with your choice of delicious carbonated craft soda bottles and return the bottles a week later to refill your flat for the next week’s ration.
Recognizing the shifting meaning of the word literally, I maintain that the Pop Shoppe sodas were literally the best. Their sweetness unparalleled and experience priceless. They were the defining taste of my childhood.
My favorite flavors were strawberry, pineapple, orange and the ultimate, saving the absolute best flavor for last, grape. It was the half-mile ride, sitting in the cargo bed of my dad’s white pickup truck, clutching the red Pop Shoppe plastic flat filled with bottles that made the Pop Shoppe run so quintessentially 70s. My dad was and continues to be the most OSCHA observant, hyper-safety conscious, danger-averse person I’ve ever known. My husband affectionately refers to me as OSCHA 2.0, and yet there he was, lifting me into the back of his pickup truck, urging me to hold on tight to the red plastic flat filled with bottles to keep them from breaking.
I could go on and on. The 70s were a wild ride. Riding bikes without helmets. Drinking water from the hose. The Dewey Decimal System. Warming ourselves on the burning hot cement at the pool and cooling ourselves by running through the sprinklers. Flats of ice cold sugary sweet sodas. Zero antibacterial soap. We are a miracle generation.
What if God is saving the best for last in this wild ride of a year? Like a small brown girl, hiding a bottle of grape soda, or a firework designer placing the big burst at the end. Or a gymnast saving her most impressive moves for the end of her routine.
Why does the climax come at the end of a piece of art, music or film, instead of the beginning? Why is dessert offered at the end of the meal, instead of the middle? Perhaps the best is saved for last because it takes time to work through the experience and have an experience work it’s way through you to be made ready for the gift. Maybe we would never truly appreciate the best, the sweetest or the strongest too early in any given experience.
God the creator saved the best for last in creation and called it “very good.” Jesus saved the best for last as he performed his first miracle at the wedding at Cana in Galilee, revealing his glory for all to see.
2020 is drawing to a close. What if God is saving the best for last in this wild ride of a year and you are now ready to press your ear close to his chest to hear His word, His heart and His voice? What if He has something for the December 2020 version of you that He couldn’t share with the January 2020 version of you?
For those of you who have been referring to this year as a dumpster fire, perhaps He has a refining word. For those of you weary from the large scale discourse and divisions and loss found in 2020, He has a healing word. For those reeling from misplaced trust, He has an inviting word, and for those of you fumbling around in the residue of it all, He has a clarifying word.
Press in and listen. Turn off the distracting noise. You are called, anointed and gifted to thrive through strength and calling and wholeness from on high, and He has something to say to you as you close out this wild ride of a year. After you hear, take a victory lap to offer thanks for making it through 2020, (and for surviving the 70s if you’re old like me), for access to the whisper of His voice, the faithfulness of His living word, and the unchanging nature of His heart.