He spreads the snow like wool
    and scatters the frost like ashes.
 He hurls down his hail like pebbles.
    Who can withstand his icy blast?

Psalm 147:16-17

Here is the final – inasmuch as I can actually mean “final” – series of images from this past weekend’s Ohio adventure.

Four photographs plus an “It’s snowing!” video, because it’s just too much fun to omit. It’s the “Lake effect” snowstorm that surprised everyone at the men’s retreat Saturday morning.

So I was in conversation with a couple of the men’s ministry guys when – in passing – somebody mentioned “Barberton”.

• “What?” I said. “Did someone say Barberton?”
• “Yes,” one of them said. “Why?”
• “Because my father-in-law, Bob Alexander, was born in Barberton!” I responded.
• “I thought her family was from Georgia…?”
• “But The Depression,” I said. “Rebekah’s grandfather Reed Alexander went to Ohio in the mid-twenties looking for a job. He found work in Barberton – at the insulator factory. Billy, Robert (Rebekah’s dad) and then Charlie were all born in Barberton.”

So they drove me over there. We found the Presbyterian Church where Grandaddy Reed was an elder and Rebekah’s father was baptized. And I also found an “Alexander Square” – likely completely unrelated. The family returned to Georgia in the early 1930’s.

But the history! This sense of connection through a family that I did not even know existed until I was 21 years old.

Again this all reminds me of the importance of connection, of how we as human being are so profoundly not alone. Of how our lives are so bound together.

So what? Well I think the “so what” of this is that we are strangers too much of the time, alienated. Such disconnection within the community is unhealthy for us as a people, and certainly un-Christian. The forces (of evil) working so hard to destroy what holds America together know they have to erode the foundation of mutual trust. But the fact is we are family. All of us.

Me stumbling onto Barberton means something important. “Alexander Square” does not have to belong to Rebekah’s arm of the Alexander clan; the square – and the family – belongs to us all.

Jesus was very pointed when he addressed the predilection he understood we all have for disunity and fragmentation and alienation. “The world will understand that you are my friends,” he said, “to the extent that you love each other.”

God has no interest in our politics or our cultural preferences or our denominational affiliation. “Just love each other!” Jesus stressed on many occasions. “It is the common denominator, and the common language, and the invitation of God.”

The pictures below: Main Street Barberton, Alexander Square, First Presbyterian Church; then the flight home.

How about this: “Lake Effect Christianity” – where the wind of the Spirit moves over the Followers of Jesus, grace and blessings come down, and the effect gets all over everything and everyone! – DEREK