I remember as a child making little May Day baskets for my friends filled with candy. So this morning I thought I would look up the origin of this mostly unobserved 'holiday'. The MSN Encarta Encyclopedia says, "May Day, holiday of ancient origin, observed on the first day of May, especially in Europe. It has traditionally been celebrated with merrymaking and festivities. Some experts trace May Day celebrations back to agricultural and fertility rites of pre-Christian times. Others associate May Day festivals with ancient Roman rites practiced in honor of Flora, the Roman goddess of spring. May Day is traditionally greeted with joyous dancing around a garlanded pole, called a maypole, from which streamers hang. Each dancer holds the end of a streamer, and the dancers wind the streamers into a pattern as they move around the maypole. Some schools and colleges still hold May Day festivals with maypole dancing and the selection of a May queen. Children have also celebrated May Day with the exchange of May baskets. After making baskets of paper, they fill the baskets with flowers, candy, or other goodies and give them to friends. Traditional May Day festivities have been kept alive in parts of England and other European countries. However, they never became especially popular in the United States."
So instead of celebrating May Day as they did in ancient times...I decided that I would just have another day of thankfulness to God...singing praises to the one who makes ALL things beautiful in its time. It may seem like a dreary rainy day, but I have a lot to be thankful for in my life. Spring and rainy days remind me of a time of renewal and a fresh start. And Lord knows we could all use a fresh start every now and then.
A song that came to mind was "Something Beautiful". When I was in High School (in Mandan, North Dakota), the youth from the church would go out to the North Dakota State Industrial School in Mandan every Friday night to hold services for the kids there. The State Industrial School was a place where kids under 18 went when they got into trouble from various things such as violence to stealing cars. Almost every Friday the kids would ask to sing this song. They knew the hymn number by heart from the songbook...they would say "let's sing #162". Here are the lyrics: "Something beautiful, something good; All my confusion He understood; All I had to offer Him was brokenness and strife, But he made something beautiful of my life". No matter how messed up we may think we are or what a mess we have made of a situation, Jesus can take us and mold us into something beautiful. O, what love, grace and mercy He has for you and me.
No comments:
Post a Comment