When I was being discharged from the hospital back in 2011, following my quadruple by-pass surgery, the doctors placed a tall cup of MiraLAX on my bedside table. They did so in response to my request for the obvious.
Meantime, my wife, Mari had been out of the room. When she reentered and saw my entire cardio-team spelling out all my post-op instructions, she quietly tuned in and took a list of mental notes. She was thirsty however; so, she inconspicuously helped herself to what she presumed was a tall cup of water. Oops!
When we all realized what just went down – literally – our eyes appealed to one another, “Do we dare tell her?” for we all knew she was my transport home. Thought we better; because she was going to find out soon enough. My hope – not too soon.
We bid a hasty farewell, not knowing when Mt. Mari-lax was going to erupt. Hindsight? my neighbor, Mario would’ve been proud; for this commute marked the first time a patient, traveling from St. Luke’s Bethlehem to Upper Nazareth, without the use of an ambulance or siren, was ever clocked under 15 minutes. It was the first time anyone ever hit the 90º left-hand turn onto Broad St. by the Nazareth Diner at 87 mph. It was the first time anyone ever launched from that set of railroad tracks at the diner’s entrance and landed past just Mivajo’s a mile up the road. It was the first time I suffered a heart attack. What irony!
Now in Mari’s defense, when she imbibed, she didn’t know that her refreshing water was my needful cocktail. Even had we not told her, it wouldn’t have taken her long to deduct the logical; which ended up giving her much more than she had ever imagined!
Two millennia earlier, Jews and Gentile-converts from all over Israel, and beyond, did what Mari had done, but with a different “tall drink of water.” They too deducted what they presumed was logical – about Jesus – and ended up getting so much more!
Why not visit this Palm Sunday to hear just what went down then?
