2 Samuel 1:25
2 Samuel 1:25
At Holy Nativity we have the best adult Sunday school class I have ever participated in. Between services for an hour every Sunday we meet at the end of the sidewalk, round the big table in the Mary Stuart Poole Library. The table is set up for about 20 people and usually is nearly full, sometimes more than full.
What makes it so interesting is that the folks who come really enjoy Bible study. We may study a book of the Bible for a few Sundays, or one or more of the Sunday’s readings, or something about the church Season. We have three class facilitators with strong backgrounds, knowledge and enthusiasm of the Bible, each of us with different perspective and willingness to -- engage -- critically, which may involve disagreement and invariably stirs lively discussion. This coming Sunday, January 5, the Lectionary offers us three different Gospel Readings, from which to Choose One, but we are not unlikely to mix it up with argument about all three. Starts 9:15, but we watch the sidewalk and don’t usually start before 9:20, and even then if we see folks ambling down the sidewalk with their coffee we hold off a couple more minutes.
Besides the Gospel readings, another thing we may touch on Sunday is 2 Samuel 1:25, David’s exclamation at the death in battle of Jonathan, who died fighting alongside his father King Saul. Ignorant of where it comes from, people often gloat “How the mighty have fallen” after someone they don’t like loses a fight of some kind. But David was grievously devastated at the loss of his beloved friend, and 2 Samuel 1:25 is part of a long, sad lament.
Long years ago when I was a junior at UFlorida I had a buddy named Jerry who was a sports fanatic. We became friends when he started working for the university Food Service Division where I had been working all my years, and also because he was from Pensacola and had a car and I could pay him for rides to drop me off at my home and pick me up the Sunday afternoon on our way back to Gainesville. Because of Jerry’s ongoing mouth and constantly jazzing the umpires he had been ejected from more than one baseball game, and during a football game he was never sitting, always jumping and screaming. Our years at Florida together I only remember his missing one game.
In those days our bitter annual rivalry was with Miami, and the game was moved back and forth year to year. In 1955 the Florida-Miami game was in Miami on November 26, the Thanksgiving weekend. Jerry had planned to drive down from Pensacola and back for the day. The score was 7-6 Miami. That Sunday afternoon when he picked me up for our return to Gainesville, I asked, “Jerry, did you go to the game?” He said, “No, Weller, I decided that if I drove all that way down and Florida lost I’d kick my butt all the way home.” This comes to mind as we sit still stunned at the outcome of last evening’s Sugar Bowl game in New Orleans. 2 Samuel 1:25.
Fall 2014 CFB will begin far different from Fall 2012 and Fall 2013.
2 Samuel 1:25
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