Monday, January 3, 2022                                          (today’s lectionary)
Monday after Epiphany
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
We couldn’t play with Miles and Jasper, we couldn’t have our New Year’s Eve party with Andi and Aki and Lisa, but we did have time to play canasta, and put together puzzles, read books, and watch football. Grandma’s kitchen smelled good because we had our own cookies and appetizers, but now … the first week of 2022 really begins. I’m leaving today for a week in Illinois, for counseling and to see our son Marc, to have lunch with friends and spend time saying goodbye to the possessions Mom gathered over her long lifetime.
So much stuff from several generations, but we don’t have a museum to put it in. Like most families, we just have to let it go. Mom’s three kids have different attitudes toward all of this. I’m the one who majored in college history, but what I consider history is sorted out in my head, not into material piles in a storage shed somewhere. You can’t take it with you. I can’t take it with me, either. When Mom left us, she was very lightly packed.
I wonder if I’ll be able to take memories of the past and hopes for the future with me when I go. I imagine not. Those trappings of temporal human life must probably be left as well. I do imagine making a new beginning after the final, final ending here on earth. That baby skin we love so much on Jasper might be on me, too.
We keep his commandments and do what pleases him. Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit whom he gave us.
I’m about to begin a book called Seven Lessons from Heaven by Mary Neal. What did she learn, and what will I learn from her? Thinking about heaven while I’m on earth tangles me in unsolvable questions, although none of them seem to matter at all when I simply spend time with Jesus.
You belong to God, children. And the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. Therefore we can know the spirit of truth.
It’s not at all that I think my way through the confusion. I just rest in the presence of “the one who is in me.” Why not? What more can I ask? This is a difficult life we live on an unwelcoming earth, surrounded by each other. We might be loving and generous, or we might not.
We are not any more predictable than the weather. In Austin the temps have been in the upper 70’s, but as I write this I hear a mighty wind beginning to blow outside our apartment, and we will wake up to air that’s 40 degrees colder. My mood could follow the thermometer down and down.
Or I can be still, lie down and sleep in peace, “for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. Then he began to preach, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand,” and he cured every disease and illness among the people.
Only once does the Bible say that Jesus wept. But I think he wept often, mourning the rejection of his friend and cousin John, grieving at the people’s shallow response to his message, angered by the closed minds of their leaders. Like us, he himself needed to remember “the one who is in me.” He needed to “lie down and sleep in peace,” and remember how close his Father was at every moment.
As I too find my way to sleep, Jesus takes me with him, and together we can dwell in safety.
(1 John 3, Psalm 2, Matthew 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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