Thursday, May 12, 2022
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
There is nothing here to take for granted
My faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him, and through my name shall his horn be exalted. He shall say of me, “You are my father, my God, the Rock, my savior.” Forever I will sing the goodness of the Lord.
Yesterday we visited chapel at Austin Classical School. Miles’ class recited their memory passage in front of the whole Mustang group of students. Then we took Jasper to watch the backhoe in HEB’s parking lot, and he was within three feet of the big yellow machine. His eyes couldn’t get open wide enough. We got yogurt and sweet corn to add to our Italian lunch, and asparagus for later.
Back home Margaret made polenta while Jasper and I hit the pool for the first time in 2022. The water was cool and clean, and Jasper’s water wings worked great. “I’m sinking,” he kept shouting between laughs. Then after a little more practice, “I’m swimming!” He has a good kick, and soon he’ll have some arm movements to go with it. Those water wings make it hard to swing your arms.
Next week we’ll go to Port Aransas to swim in a pool and in the Gulf of Mexico. On the beach we might mostly play in the surf and make sand castles in the salt water. The courage of little people has its limits, and so does the courage of their parents. How careful should we all be? I have no answers. What matters, I think, is gradually moving limits out and having fun and avoiding calamity as you do it.
All the while we play, there are wars. Not just rumors of wars, but wars. While we are here throwing balls across the pool and eating strawberries, yesterday a gas line from Russia to Europe through Ukraine was cut off. I skipped the article, but I read the headline. Many people are being injured and killed every day in deadly violence. How do our personal puzzle pieces fit into the whole jigsaw, if not awkwardly?
God chose our ancestors, and when he had destroyed seven nations in Canaan, he gave our ancestors their land. Then he provided judges up to Samuel the prophet. Our ancestors asked for a king, and God gave them Saul, then David. From David’s descendants God brought to Israel a savior, Jesus, about whom John said, “I am not worthy even to untie his sandals.”
I do have confidence in this, that we will see the goodness of God in the land of the living. This is not a promise only for those who suffer, but for all of us. It’s a promise not only for the moment, while we might be laughing and others crying out in anger and pain, but when those tables are turned, a promise for all time in all places.
Whoever receives the one I send receives me. And whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
I run in the path of false guilt far too much, and I must not waste away while we are safe from suffering. There is life to be lived in whatever way it is given to us today. At the chapel service Miss Foshea led the crowd of 100 young students (Pre-K through grade two) in reading the verse they read EVERY day:
THIS IS THE DAY THAT THE LORD HAS MADE. LET US REJOICE AND BE GLAD IN IT!
(Acts 13, Psalm 89, Revelation 1, John 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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