Be Careful - The Rev. Melanie W. J. Slane

Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

For me, the third grade was probably one of the best times of my life. I could pick out my own Umbro shorts, scrunchie my own ponytail, And ride my bike freely around the neighborhood from sun up to dinner time, getting into some good and maybe not-so-good trouble with the other kids who lived nearby. I learned to cook, spent unnumbered hours creating trampoline routines, and made prank phone calls to my friends from school. Is your refrigerator running? Better go and catch it. I vividly remember a Saturday morning in July of 1994, climbing the gutter at the elementary school down the street and slipping in through an unlocked window, and scaling down the bleachers into the gymnasium. So that we could swing on the big rope in the open gym. Being eight was great. Life was good, not a care in the world. Nostalgia set in earlier this summer when I realized with sentimental longing and wistful affection that the mothering of my own eight-year-old children has been marred by the same two words that begin our reading from Ephesians today; be careful.