At about 8:40PM or so, one of my friends came and gave the warning that it was time to head out because it was almost sunset and the gates closed at the park where we were holding a celebration taco bar pot luck for our graduates, and so I headed out to my car and left. As it happened, the security guy was already at the gate ready to close it by the time I left, but I figured he would warn the people in our party and a few others who were still in the park, so I drove home. By the time I arrived home I had a message on my phone from one of the people who was stuck there saying that there were more than a dozen cars that had been locked inside, and that there had been promises that in fifteen minutes someone would come, and a friendly cop even showed up was unable to open the gate, so that the group of my friends and brethren did not get to leave until almost 10PM. While there was signage that was clear pointing out that Hazel Dell Park’s gates closed at dusk, it may not have been clear to everyone what time dusk was. I was lucky to get out myself, since I had been warned and decided to heed the warning, albeit in a quiet and somewhat stealthy way.

This is at least the second time I have gone to a picnic at this park, and I must say that I have not particularly enjoyed it. The way the park is designed, there are covered areas with only a few entrances and exits, and the same is true of the park as a whole. Now, at a park like that, even with its design, you can make it clear if you want to be close to someone, if you don’t want to be close to someone, or if you don’t really care who you happen to meet. One can see certain groups of people playing sports, or others finding quiet corners to chat, or others somehow managing to find private conversations at the tables. After helping a bit with the setup, I decided to choose a fairly quiet and inconspicuous place and see what happened. As it happened, I always had people who were walking by, or circling, or hovering around chatting with others, or coming and going to join a conversation briefly because it happened to be a subject of biblical interest. For whatever reason, and it was not by my design, we had a lengthy conversation about the wedding of Rebekkah and Isaac.

This conversation is worth discussing because it showed quite a few layers of what can be learned about a given story. For one, the character of Isaac and Abraham was possible to determine from the faithfulness and enthusiastic service of the servant sent to find a wife for Isaac. If one looks at the allegorical layer of meaning of this story, Abraham is like God, Isaac is like Jesus Christ, Rebekkah is like the church, and the servant is like the ministry or prophets or those involved in proclaiming the Gospel, whose job it is to model God’s ways to the world and help bring the church to God. Additionally, it is important to note that people were far more willing to trust their intuition in such matters in the ancient world than appears the case nowadays. At any rate, it made for an interesting discussion. At least a couple of us in the conversation would have been happy for God to arrange marriages, but it appears not everyone is as fortunate as Isaac in that regard.

In thinking about the multiple layers of texts and in encounters and conversations, I was reminded of one of the blog entries that is linked to my entry on Naboth’s vineyard. One of the many illegitimate ways of dealing with a text is to find one layer of meaning and use that to attack other layers of meaning that one does not like. Naboth’s vineyard does talk about eminent domain, especially in the form I have seen with regards to my own family–when long-range government plans involve the potential for eminent domain, coincidentally (and, to make this clear, I am saying that in an ironic/sarcastic way) lower the assessed value of these properties making for much lower bills when those properties are finally seized five or ten years down the road, making it impossible to buy comparably priced property, as a fringe benefit. Now, this is not the only layer of meaning the story has, and the author of the blog entry helpfully includes other meanings about greed and exploitation that are also applicable as well. The stories of our lives and of the Bible are far too rich to include just one layer of meaning. Rather, they include many. We just have to be wise and understanding enough to live well, and have enough faith to believe that God will sort it out in His own way, at the proper time, since we are not often competent at these matters ourselves, not knowing what gates are open, and what gates are closed.