Grace at "Yellow Front"

Today is one of my favorite kind of day. Seven inches of snow fell yesterday and today is bright sunshine. The snow was brilliant and a fresh layer of pure white cover everything. I was reminded of a great verse from the book of Isaiah: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow (v. 18).

It is amazing to be forgiven of sin. Christians (alone) have this experience and it is hard for me to imagine life apart from the forgiveness of God.

God provided a great lesson for me on forgiveness at Yellow Front.

You haven't heard of Yellow Front. It was a little-known department store where I worked in high school. Think of Target, with about 10% of the inventory and square footage. We had a little bit of a lot of things, but not a real good selection of anything. Like Woolworths' (if you can remember that one) only not as classy. The logo -- if you could call it that -- must have taken 20 minutes to come up with.

I was a stock clerk and loved the job. One of my duties was the plant department. The plants were displayed on the end of an aisle. They had to be stocked promptly and watered.

The summer of 1977 was winding down and my departure to CU was nearing. I looked up in the stock room and saw a troubling sight: A box of plants that I had forgotten to stock. A good option at that time would have been to immediately pull the box off the shelf and see if they could be salvaged. I didn't do that. Instead, I tried to wait it out and hope that I would be gone before the box would be discovered.

That didn't work. On a walk-through with me on my last day, the store manager spotted the box. My last memory at Yellow Front involves standing at the loading dock with my manager, Bob Warner. We were going through the box, tossing plants into the dumpster one-by-one. I don't remember any indication of the anger that I deserved.

Three plants were salvageable and he gave them to me.

It was the opposite of what I had coming. I should have gotten chewed out and rebuked. A dock in my paycheck would have been defensible. Instead, I drove away with three plants. They went with me to my dorm room and were a reminder of Bob's kindness and my experience at Yellow Front.

The gift of the plants is now one of my greatest life lessons on grace. Grace is being given good things despite doing bad things. Grace comes from God to me every day. Despite having sinned in many ways -- more than I can count or am aware of -- He has given me salvation and His Holy Spirit and friends and work and blessing upon blessing.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. II Cor 13:14

Sad Day for Denver

It is odd to think that this could even happen. Today was a blunt reminder of the changing times as the Rocky Mountain News, a daily part of my growing up, has ceased publication. I loved the "tabloid" format, meaning that it opened more like a magazine than typical newspaper. I read it every day at the breakfast table (yes, it was mainly the sports and the comics). Even now, on my trips back to Denver I would look forward to sitting down with the RMN and catching up. I'll miss it.

Back in the swim

I took swimming lessons as a five-year-old at Morse Park in Lakewood, then again at a club where my dad knew the pool manager. My mom laughs that she would watch me attempt to do the back float and gradually sink beneath the surface of the water. I don't remember much about the lessons other than not looking forward to them and I can't remember why. Maybe it had something to do with the aforementioned back float.

In college I discovered swimming as exercise. The University of Colorado rec center had a south-facing wall of glass that overlooked the mountains. The 90 minutes I had between my first and second class were enough time to head to the pool and swim laps. As the morning sun streamed in and with the Flat Irons in full view, I gained the satisfaction of a mile swim.

It has only been a few years since I took it up again. Though it had been decades, somehow my old stroke was still with me, even though my 19-year-old body is long gone. The pool at the Y is not as scenic as the one in Boulder, but it offers me a great place to practice endurance and work on some new strokes. I am taking lessons at Courage Center -- an extraordinary place where people with disabilities learn to overcome.

Not long ago I realized that one memory from the childhood swimming experiences planted a seed that took root in me. It involves the manager of the pool, Paul Davis, who was a friend of our family. We sometimes arrived early enough to catch him swimming a mile before our lessons. His stroke was even, efficient, relaxed, peaceful. I've since concluded that his peaceful swimming was the result of the peace in this Christian man's heart.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you . . . Isaiah 43:2