2nd May 2017

My son sent me a meme the other day. We do communicate in more meaningful ways, but he is kind to pass on things that he thinks will enrich my life. The little brain-emission was titled ‘The Four Stages of Life’, and displayed four pictures in linear progression:  a baby bottle, a bottle of coke, a beer bottle, and finally a drip.

I enjoyed the generational landscape for a moment, and quickly identified myself as Gen-Beer, grateful to have survived the previous stage with all my teeth, and equally grateful for the sense of distance between the now and the not-yet saline solution. But then I sighed. The drip-stage. Is that it? Is that where life finishes? Not with one’s mother’s milk, but with some doctor’s prescription expressed through a cruel nipple?

Thankfully not! We are still the Easter season – but two weeks from Resurrection Sunday – where we remember that there is life post-drip, and take consolation in the hope of a fifth stage of life. Jesus at the Last Supper spoke of a fifth bottle, telling his disciples that he would drink again the fruit of the vine in his Father’s kingdom, and promised that all who would look to him to satisfy their thirst would join him around the table.  And so we say: “O drip, where is your victory! O drip, where is your sting!” “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

DM 2^nd May 2017