Scarlet Garland/Scarlet Cord

Back in early October, 2008 Dean and I went on a “Foliage Tour” of the New England states.  We hit the right time that year because the colors were glorious. As we travelled from Boston to Lexington, I noticed a most unusual “decoration” on many of the evergreens along the highway. It appeared that red garlands had been draped on the trees. After questioning someone about the strange sight, they said it was holly, which is a parasite, the leaves of which had turned a brilliant red.

When I read the chapter in Ann Voskamp’s book, The Greatest Gift, about Rahab’s scarlet cord, I was reminded of the holly bedecked trees alongside that Massachusetts highway. The reason for that comparison will become more apparent further on.

Rahab’s story found in Joshua ­­­­chapter 2 is an awesome one of faith in the face of imminent death. To cut to its essence, the Israelite spies whose lives she saved gave her the following life-saving instructions: she was to hang a scarlet cord out her window to save herself and her family when the walls of Jericho fell before God’s power, giving Israel the victory

This pagan prostitute-turned believer obeyed and survived. But that’s not the end of her story—or of God’s. She married a prince of Judah named Salmon, they had a son named Boaz, and two or three generations later, her great-great grandson David, became the mighty king of Israel.

But still God’s story was not finished because Jesus Christ, the Messiah, came from David’s lineage which means that Rahab was the many-times removed grandmother of the Savior. How awesome is that!

This paragraph from The Greatest Gift is wonderfully descriptive. “Rahab, the scarlet woman, flings a scarlet cord out her window—that one thread everything’s hanging on. And that scarlet cord is her identity—that scarlet line running from the animal sacrifice covering Adam and Eve’s nakedness in the Garden of Eden to the crimson markings of blood on the doorframes of the first Passover to the willing drops of blood in the garden of Gethsemane—and Rahab is delivered by that singular scarlet cord and tied into the Jewish family.” As are we who believe.

Those beautiful swags of brilliant red festooning the evergreen trees we saw alongside the Massachusetts highway would eventually become the means of death for the trees. That’s exactly what our sins (the Bible speaks of them as being like scarlet) will do to us unless we’re willing to accept a very expensive remedy—our Savior, Jesus Christ, dying in our place to pay for our sins.

Red garland on a Christmas tree will have a different meaning to me from this time forward.

12-13-14

December 13, 2014. Such numbers in a date beg to be written about in some fashion because they will not occur again for another hundred years. And, strangely, this makes me think of my grandmother whom I’ve written of before.

Looking back at the year 1914 as inhabitants of the US, records tell us that Charlie Chaplin made his film debut, Babe Ruth debuted with the Boston Red Sox and the Panama Canal became a reality. For those living in Europe during the year 1914, it was not a good year as what became known as World War I began in August with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand.

However, in the USA, that probably didn’t stir much interest as the US didn’t enter the war until 1917. I’m pretty sure the farmers of northeastern MO were more interested in their corn crop yield, etc. and their young daughters were interested in how they might renovate their shirtwaist so it would appear they had a new dress for the Christmas play party at the neighbor’s house.

My grandmother turned 20 in 1914 and although I have none of her diaries, this new decade in her life may well have been quite a rite of passage. Her circuit-riding Free Methodist preacher Grandfather Reber had died in January, she turned 20 in May and it’s anyone’s guess how much trickle-down of political doings reached the attention of an attractive 20-year-old.

So I have to imagine how my Grandmother Tillie, her older sister, Anna, and her parents might have spent 12/13/14 one hundred years ago. Possibly Anna was still attending business college in a city about 30 miles away. The train ran daily between Palmyra (a town about 7 miles awayfrom the Reber farm) so transportation wasn’t too much of a problem. Grandmother may well have been teaching at a country schoolhouse although I have no way of knowing the exact years she spent teaching prior to her marriage in 1919. Her transportation would have been by horseback as both girls are pictured with their mounts in several snapshots. Given those guesses, the weekends were probably busy ones of sewing presents and baking any desserts, etc. that could be prepared ahead of time for the coming Christmas festivities with family and friends.

As I think of the likely unawareness of John and Jane Q. Public regarding what was happening across the ocean on December 14, 1914, I wonder if I am somewhat the same. Not because of the lack of media information but perhaps because the deluge of news and pictures have desensitized me. At any rate, I can’t imagine any British newspaper reporting the 1914 Christmas Truce ever reaching Marion County, Missouri.

The YouTube video of the 1914 Christmas truce between the German soldiers in the trenches and their British counterparts is such a bittersweet example of the peace and harmony the Babe in a Manger came to earth to effect. How sad that a generation of young men perished for mere political reasons. And how sad that our world has learned nothing from that loss in one hundred years.