Flashback to "Those Seventy's" Days...Random Journal Day

(Linking up with my friends at Random Journal DayClick here to join the link up)

Note from the Present:   This past week I have been reminded about our early ministry days and our experience of being in a Christmas Parade with our youth group.  What got me thinking about this was the unusual phenomenon currently taking place in the city of Ocala, where I am presently employed.  The Ocala Annual Christmas Parade will happen tomorrow afternoon.  For the past week (or more) I have been noticing places all along the sides of the streets roped off and lawn chairs tied with ropes, staking out people's vantage points for watching the parade. This is an annual event...people, businesses, groups, anybody interested enough to participate, stake their claims for land all along the parade route way in advance.  Strangely enough, no one dares to move the chairs and ropes from those places.  It's the honor system.  I find it rather intimidating...how does a newcomer find a place to watch the parade pass by?  You have to wait for someone to die and leave their favorite spot to you in their will, I guess.  I've never seen this happen anywhere else...have you? Just wondering...Needless to say, I won't be watching the parade. I'm not high enough up in the city eschelon to rate a vantage point. Not yet...(ha)

So, here is a story from our past from when I wasn't just a spectator in a Christmas parade, but an actual participant, riding through the streets of Orlando, Florida, with thousands of people watching our float floating by!  Read on from my "journal writings" from the mid-1970's. To further set the scene, we had just arrived fresh from Bible College Grad School, where we had actually seriously considered going into foreign missions full time.  But God had other plans for our lives back at home.

December, 1975:

Isaiah 6:8  “Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?’  Then I said, ‘Here am I! Send me.’”

 

So John (my hubby) accepted the call to be the Youth Pastor at a church in Florida, and we happily moved back to our home territory!  It was an exciting time in our lives! After the days of testing and preparation, we were actually going to be entering the ministry!  Our charge was to take a small group of teens, approximately six to ten on the average attendance, and make them grow!  Grow, not only in number, but also most preferably to grow in spirit and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ!  Not an easy task in the mid-seventies, at the close of the Viet Nam War. There was a lot of unrest, dissatisfaction, and turbulence in our country at that time.  But something interesting was stirring in our nation as well.  As we approached the Bi-Centennial in 1976, there was a new wave of patriotism and a spirit of revival in the hearts of many. 

One of our first assignments was to enter a float in the Orlando Christmas Parade, and the theme for the parade that year interestingly enough was “God Bless America!” A Bible verse that came to our minds was II Chronicles 7:14, which states: 

“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

 

What better message than this to convey the idea of “God Bless America!”  Since this was a Christmas parade, we sought a way to combine the Christmas message with this message of hope and healing for our land.  So our youth came up with the idea of our float being a live nativity scene, with the banners on the side of the float reading “God Has Blessed America! He Sent His Son!”  Then on the front of the truck was a large wooden open Bible, with the II Chronicles 7:14 verse inscribed upon it. 

As we drove down through the streets of Orlando, we had the “Hallelujah Chorus” and other excerpts of “Handel’s Messiah” and “The King Is Coming”(By Bill Gaither, 1970) playing on a loud speaker. The young people were in their costumes of the Nativity of our Lord, with that powerful message for all to see.  I was riding in the cab of the truck with my husband, and I was watching the faces of the people along the road as they saw our float glide by.  Many people were cheering and clapping and praising God for the positive message it inspired.  I had this vision of being in a parade on the streets of heaven someday, with all the saints of the ages welcoming us into glory. It was such a beautiful dream, and perhaps a glimpse of what that day will truly be like.  I couldn’t help but allow the tears to roll down my cheeks as I thought about our country and the millions of people who still needed to know Jesus, and I knew then that we had made the right choice by serving the Lord in our homeland.  But we sure had our work cut out for us!

Back to the Present:  Sounds like a message that we still need today!  Nothing much has really changed in the past almost 40 years!  

So, do you have any special parade memories that you can share? Or perhaps a time when you participated in a live nativity scene or other special Christmas program? Now would be a good time to take advantage of the many Christmas musicals, plays, and yes, even parades that are available to help ring in the true Spirit of Christmas! 

Merry Christmas to you and yours.