Give Up The Ghost

     Licking our friends is not being nice to them. Keep your underwear inside your pants; we don’t need to show them to our friends. I know you didn’t stick your head in the toilet by accident! I’m sorry, I pooed on the floor. These were all quotes I heard and recorded during my surreal one-year stint teaching preschool and part of the reason I gave up that career altogether. Even the good kids licked the bottom of their shoes! I cried when my husband said I didn’t have to go back. God bless the teachers who never give up.
     I’ve given up a few other times in my life. There was the guitar I always wanted to learn to play but it sat around silent for years until someone finally stole it. And there were dozens of small appliances I optimistically disassembled like I’d seen Dad do to hundreds of broken things, but I had to trash them when parts wouldn’t fit back together.
     If something dies or we have to abandon our mission, we often refer to it as giving up the ghost. For example, after racking up 300,000 miles, our old pick-up truck finally “gave up the ghost.” Now I don’t particularly like ghosts, goblins, or anything Halloween for obvious reasons, but I do have a funny ghost story. It was told one dark night in the farmhouse living room where a few of us had gathered after dinner.
     Back in the day youngsters had to walk from house to house to trick or treat. We rural kids had to earn our candy, often traveling great distances and then being required to enter the house and sweat a while behind our toxic rubber or plastic masks while the friendly neighbor would try to guess who we were. After an eternity we would eventually be rewarded with a handmade popcorn ball wrapped in cellophane or a few pieces of hard candy, or a Tootsie-Roll. The night in question happened on Boggs Mill Road in Hacker Valley where Trick or Treaters walked miles between houses. One ornery uncle who will remain anonymous except to say his last name was Lake, which could reveal quite a bit if you’re familiar with the area, decided to prank scare the kids. He ran ahead of them and climbed up in the hay loft of a barn near the road he knew they’d be passing by. He sat in the quiet darkness anticipating their arrival until finally he heard them laughing as they walked along using only the light of the full moon. As they got closer he put a sheet over his head and stood in the open door of the hayloft and sort of swayed ominously back and forth much like he thought a ghost would. He got the reaction he’d hoped for as they screamed in terror, “There’s a ghost!” He didn’t get to enjoy his success long however because before they all broke into a run, one kid pointed up at the open door and yelled, “There are two of them!” In a flurry of flapping arms, he shed his sheet and fled too. To this day they are not sure who the second ghost was or who was more scared—the uncle or the kids.
     In bible times “give up the ghost” referred to the more serious and literal surrendering of one’s spirit to the Father upon death. Luke 23:46 tells us “And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit’: and having said thus, he gave up the ghost.” And John adds an important detail in John 19:30. He recorded Jesus saying “It is finished”.  Aren’t you glad to have someone ready to save you who finishes things?  He didn’t give up on His mission and, regardless of how broken we are, He won’t give up on us either.

---