Dear Ice Cream Screamers:

It didn’t happen very often. Driving east on Center Street in Omaha on the way home, every once in a while my dad would take the right turn just past the entrance to the Bohemian National Cemetery, and we were there: Dairy Queen! Usually we drove right past, all that creamy deliciousness completely ignored—my sister’s Mr. Misty, my brother’s chocolate malt, my other brother’s hot fudge sundae, my other sister’s Dilly Bar or dipped cone, my mother’s beloved Peanut Buster Parfait, my Buster Bar (a Peanut Buster Parfait on a stick) and my father’s small plain cone—all zipped past us in a wave of silent disappointment.

It seemed so random, but my sister, Madam Dilly Bar, and I believed there to be a magical sequence of good behavior and subtle suggestion that would trigger my father’s right turn. We knew that simply asking seldom worked. In fact, we were pretty sure if we said we wanted to go to Dairy Queen, the direct approach never worked. Likewise, we discerned, if we expressed disappointment when we didn’t stop, that would guarantee DQ bypass for weeks to come. No, it had to be a complex combination of wishing, hoping, longing and not being annoying. In the way-back of the station wagon for ten blocks prior to the hoped-for stop, my sister and I made sure we did not fight or even poke each other. If we blew past the turn, we would vow to behave next time for twelve blocks.

Unfortunately, intermittent reward amplified the illusion of control. Standing next to the picnic bench in the Dairy Queen parking lot, we would carefully review the past three hours of behavior to determine what chain of events brought about the desired outcome. We would then pledge to recreate the exact dynamics to ensure similar results.

Of course, we never broke the code. We never broke it because our behavior had little or nothing to do with a stop for frozen treats. What we could not see was my father’s wallet. Working at the time as an auto parts salesman, the likelihood of a soft serve stop depended more on that week’s commission than it did on our behavior. There was a discernable pattern, but it was completely hidden from those in the back of the Mercury Voyager. Like a band of pagans commending a particular sequence of dance steps to open the heavens with crop-saving rain, we actually believed the desired outcome had something to do with us. We were wrong.

As Isaiah wrote, “'My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,' says the LORD. 'For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.'” (Isaiah 55.8-9). When things don’t break the way we hope or respond to our manipulations, perhaps, wrote the prophet, there are conditions at play that we cannot discern. The important fact remains: with or without a Buster Bar, I knew the one driving loved us all.

Still baffled by the Mr. Misty (who orders a slushy when the alternative is processed soft serve?), I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor