Jesus can reach down far

I once had these three photographs. I’ve been looking for them for days, even behind pictures in other frames but I can’t seem to find them. One is a picture of a blue sky; and right in the middle, almost taking up the whole frame, is a very large bunch of colored, helium balloons. Attached to the bottom of the balloons is a small, red shop rag. The next picture is the same sky, but the balloon bunch looks smaller because it has risen about fifty feet into the air. The last photograph is the blue sky again, but now the balloons with attached shop rag is a rather small, colorful dot moving swiftly heavenward.

Many years ago, I and my son, Ryan, who was about nine years old at the time, lived in a parsonage next to the church I served in Elsberry, Missouri, north of St. Louis. Ryan had a pet hamster whom his cousin named M. C. Hamster. I won’t go into detail how M. C. Hamster met his ultimate demise. Suffice it to say that one day M. C. Hamster “demised.” Ryan was understandably emotional about it, but he still had his wits (and Christian faith) about him. It was early morning and Ryan was about to go to school. I promised him that while he was gone I would give M. C. Hamster a proper burial.

The expressions of childhood faith can be so precious and contagious. Ryan (I promise this is what he said) exclaimed, “No . . . wait Dad! Let’s get some balloons and send him up to Jesus!”

While Ryan was at school, I wrapped the miniature carcass in a red shop rag. The funeral bundle weighed just less than an empty, small Coke bottle. (Remember those little bottles?) I took the bottle to the local/only florist and requested that they inflate enough helium balloons that the balloons would be able to lift the bottle. An hour later the florist had my order ready. Luckily, I was able to get the gazillion dollars worth of balloons into my very small car. (And you think today’s funerals are expensive.) Back at the house, I attached the small, red bundle of the demised hamster.

It was a beautiful, clear afternoon when Ryan arrived home. We went to the back yard, said a benediction, and Ryan hesitantly but solemnly released the balloon-decorated- red-hamster-shroud into the sky. Heavenward it ascended till we could see it no more.

How often, in the days immediately following Easter, do countless Christians and would-be believers recall the loved ones they’ve lost, those who have gone before us, and the many graves beside which, in silence, we have stood and grieved. So soon after hearing again the Gospel story of the Easter empty tomb, do we not contemplate our own “demise,” and hope and pray that the Promise is true?

I owe so much to the Church and the Gospel it proclaims. And to my Savior, the Christ, as the hymn declares, “all to Him I owe.” But I also owe so much of my Christian faith to my son, Ryan, who lived his belief in the love and care of Jesus.

Once, when I was sharing with friends the story of Ryan’s M. C. Hamster and the balloons, they said something to the effect of: “Can you imagine some farmer in Illinois plowing his field and coming across that bundle of deflated balloons!” They didn’t realize how mistaken they were. M. C. Hamster, in his floating, red winding sheet, made it all the way to Heaven, because Jesus can reach down far.