Mark 1:1-8

Billy dreamt about how it used to be. He didn’t like living in the now – getting up in the morning, riding the bus to school, dealing with grades and homework, and playgound bullies, and so many things he couldn’t understand – things no one seemed to understand! Like new math. And new schools. And why they had to move so far away from grandpa and grandma. It was hard living in the now, so when he heard his dad say, "When I was a kid…," he wished he was back then. When there was so much snow to play in, and you had to walk two miles to school. When things were made right. And people were honest and sincere. Things were so much simpler, dad said, and so much better. It seemed good to him, too. And he wished with all his might that something could happen, and he could go back then.

He dreamt about how it used to be. And so when his grandpa said, "When I was a kid….," he wished he was back then. When there was no running water, and kids tipped over outhouses, and there were plow horses to ride, and fields to play in, and when you could play hookey all day long to go fishing. When things were ever-so-much simpler and life was good, and people knew what they believed, and people were good to one another, and there was family that sat around the table and ate all their meals together and talked about good things. He wished with all his might that something could happen, and he could go back then.

Billy loved to read books about "way back then:" about people living on farms, or on the frontier, in times that were different, and simpler, when you didn’t have to worry about school, or the terrible things that happen across the world in places whose names you can’t even pronounce, or the terrible things that seem to happen "almost in your backyard," as his dad would say, that are reported on television, and on the radio, and that seemed to fill conversations around the dinner table – when Billy and his family ever got the chance to eat together – which wasn’t often these days.

Billy wished he could live "way back then." He dreamed about it. Sometimes he dreamed about living back when his dad was a boy. Sometimes he dreamt about living back when his grandpa was young. Sometimes he was a settler out on the prairie, or a cowboy, fighting the Indians. Sometimes he even daydreamed about these things so much that they almost seemed real to him. He would think about being at the fishing hole with his toes dangling in an icy stream, or camping on the prairie, with the feel of the warm sun on his face, and the smell of rich, soft earth beneath him. He would think about simpler times, better times than these, and how good it all was. Then someone would call his name, or bump him, and he would be back again. In the present. And he would sigh a very deep sigh. And wish again that he could go back – wish so hard that, if wishes could make dreams come true, his surely would.

One day, Billy awoke to sleet beating on the window, and a dismal December sky as gray and cold as old snow. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and, when he could see more clearly noticed that everything was, indeed, different - changed. His room was cold and dark. He got up to the realization that there was no electricity, only the stub of a candle rested on his bed-side stand. The wind whistled through the thin, uninsulated walls of his bedroom, causing the window drapes to dance. He looked out a frosted window onto an unpaved street, onto people huddled against the cold, people seeking shelter against the wind which whipped down the alleys, from sleet falling like icy daggers from cheerless skies above, and from the slick, freezing mud below. He saw a man hunched in a doorway without mittens or jacket, and a coal vendor arguing loudly with a woman who seemed on the verge of tears, while his horse – an old gray mare -shivered and braced itself against the wind. He stepped back to look at his own room. It was sparse – hardly a book, let alone a toy, was to be seen. He moved toward the chair to put on some clothes, gathered in a frozen pile on the seat. He shivered in the cold, while his back ached from the uncomfortably thin mattress. His clothes were frosty, and slipped on like ice, and his shoes – only one pair were apparent in the room – were stiff and hurt his feet. He thought about the rest of his day – hauling in a new load of coal for the furnace, to keep some heat in the house, about trudging though the frozen muck to a one-room school house, with only a small coal heater to keep the class warm; about trying to write with fingers that were icy cold, and a teacher that had to somehow teach fifteen children of different ages at the same time.

"Billy." The suddenness of his mother’s voice shattered his dream. "Billy, wake up – you’ll be late for school."

Billy lay in his bed just one moment more. Just long enough to think about his dream, which seemed so real. And to think about the past, and about why it is that something like that holds such an appeal for us. Perhaps it is simply because it is past – done – and that makes it easier to get a handle on than a future that remains unwritten and so full of frightening possibility, or a present that seems to be constantly shifting on us. All-in-all, the good old days were not so much different than now: there is good and there is evil, there are acts of nobility and acts of great avarice; for the human heart, from one age to another, has not changed a great deal.

Perhaps the best place for the past is where it has taken up residence – in the past, and therefore in the presence of God, who holds all things in his hands. And perhaps the best place for us is in the present – this one day God has given into our care. This one day is the only time God has given us in which we may live, enjoy, celebrate, refrain from evil and do some good. At least, in that sudden moment of realization, when everything for one moment becomes clear, between dull sleep and the bright morning of self-awareness, that is what Billy finally concluded. And then he got up, and got on his nice, warm clothes, slipped on his tennis shoes, went down to breakfast, got on a bus, and went off to school.