Recently I found myself too ill to attend work and just ill enough to find my way to the Walk-In Clinic for care. I was quite sure I was going to be diagnosed with a combination of the flu, COVID and bronchitis, I just knew I was juggling all three illnesses. I felt as though I had been run over by a school bus loaded with children.
Much to my surprise, it was merely a severe case of pollen. Nothing exotic as I had expected. Unable to sleep the night before, I chose to carry myself home to spend the rest of the day recovering while feasting on cough drops, sinus medicine and antibiotics. After a brief nap, while surfing through the television channels I ran across General Hospital. I was almost in disbelief, as I thought the Soaps were a thing of the past.
Mesmerized, I watched every last minute while cackling in disbelief that the show was still on, but even more intriguing was the fact that it still had some of the same actors. Some had even migrated away from The Young and the Restless and the long gone, All My Children.
Watching the show brought back the best of childhood memories. I vividly remember watching, The Edge of Night and All My Children with my mother before I went to kindergarten. Once school started, I continued my love for All My Children and even took in One Life to Live. My mother never missed an episode and neither did I.It wasn’t until I was older that I realized the CBS soaps were just as much fun. During the summer months I would walk across the street to watch Guiding Light with my neighbor.
The storylines were so wild it almost seemed real. One time Reve Shayne from Guiding Light had a clone but it ended up being her long-lost cousin, Dolly. Another time, Marlena from Days of Our Lives was possessed by a devil. There was also time traveling on One Life to Live. And, no one ever truly died. I never will forget when my favorite All My Children actress died, her name was Maria Gray. She perished in an airplane crash…and they actually showed her plane falling off of a cliff, I was pretty sure she was not coming back.
Or was she?
That’s the thing about the soaps, they never really died and it was so creative how they would come back to life when you least expect it. Someone was always getting a divorce, lying about the paternity of a child, finding adopted children from years past, having affairs, and fighting. It was so scandalous. (Still wondering why my mother thought it was a good idea for me to partake of this type of entertainment…)
My daddy, who is an old country preacher, (don’t tell him I said that) once told me that the Bible was filled with Soap Opera moments, scandals, and too many outrageous transgressions to keep count. He also light heartedly joked as he told me, “Can you imagine making a mistake that was featured in a book that would be read by people for thousands of years to come?”
The pages of the Bible are filled with scandals and wildly farfetched story lines. One man fathered a child with his housekeeper. Another man slayed a giant with a stone. There is even a woman who has had five husbands. A king had a man killed because he fancied his wife. One lady birthed at child at the age of 90. A man traded his birthright for a bowl of stew. One man built a boat and loaded it with two of every animal.
The biggest of all, a virgin gave birth to a child that changed the world forever. This same man fed a crowd of 5,000 with five loaves of bread and two fishes.
It is really hard to imagine that most mistakes that lead to a scandal are born out of not knowing better, trying to cover up a transgression that makes you look bad, pretending to be something that we aren’t, and even deliberately choosing to do wrong because it makes us feel good at the moment.
The storylines in the Bible are endless and so is the love of our Savior.
Thankfully we are loved and forgiven by a God who has eternal love for his children. Thankfully he is an old pro at making beauty out of ashes and giving a peace that surpasses all understanding.
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness”.
Lamentations 3:22-23
