Addicted to Ink

Friday, April 21, 2006

Did anyone else do this at school?

(Note: this is cross-posted from my "daily journal" entries at www.barclaypress.com, but I was just curious if anyone else had fun memories of "parachute day")

With a snap of his wrist, the blanket sharply rose, then gently fell, hitting the mattress smoothly, evenly.

"Like 'parachute'," I said, a simple memory triggered. "Did you guys do that in gym class?"

"Yeah," he said. "We'd throw a ball in the middle, and wave the parachute up and down."

It made me smile, thinking of those days in elementary school gym class. All 30 of us would stand there, each with our portion of the cool, slick fabric. We, too, would throw balls in the middle, rigging up some kind of game. We'd march in a circle, waving the fabric up and down, seeing how fast we could go. We'd all raise the fabric as high over our heads as we could, as quickly as we could, then scramble to sit under it, to create a vaccum, and time how long it took for the tent to collapse.

It was the perfect gym activity for all kids. The chubby ones. The clumsy ones. The shy ones. The awkward ones. No fear of being picked last. No fear of doing something stupid in front of everyone. We were equal. We were a team. We were one, working together, a unified goal of keeping the balls bouncing or the parachute in the air.

We were covered by the graceful sweep of a gentle, sturdy fabric softly embracing us all.

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered. Romans 4:7.

That's all of us. The chubby ones. The shy ones. The clumsy ones. The awkward ones. The broken ones. We are covered by the precious grace and forgiveness of our Jesus, whose perfect sacrifice embraces us all.

1 Comments:

Blogger Heather said...

I did!

8:46 AM  

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