Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Feast of Saint Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Considerable treasure
Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat. If it dies, it produces much fruit.
Hospitals and clinics abound in Austin, and we grains of wheat take our turns at lengthening our earthly lives. It was our turn yesterday.
We took Margaret for an echocardiogram. By we, I mean Miles and Jasper and me. We brought our $30 plaid-seat wheelchair and took turns riding it around the five floors of the hospital clinic. Miles took pictures of all the pictures on the clinic walls. We rode up and down the glass walled elevators and met a few other kids.
Margaret’s echo lasted about an hour. After she was finished, we drove by our friend’s house nearby and looked for the community pool where she is taking us tomorrow. We couldn’t find it, so we used our computer’s Google Earth drone when we got home – there it is!
Being booklovers, we are gradually gathering a library’s worth of kids’ books. Monday we found a sidewalk library and pulled into the driveway. We dropped off two books but found four more. Margaret has been reading books to Miles and Jasper for the last hour.
Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each must do as already determined, without sadness or compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
We kept the syringes and tubes Margaret used to inject antibiotic last summer, and now the boys suck water in and squeeze water out of the five syringes we have left. Sometimes the water gets everywhere. Usually they are kind of careful, self-contained. Do you believe that? Maybe not so often, actually.
God is able to make every grace abundant for you, so that in all things, always having all you need, you may have an abundance for every good work.
Saint Lawrence gets a personal Feast because he offered his Roman police and prefect the most valuable treasure of the church. They did a sweep looking for gold, and Lawrence asked them to let him gather it for them. A couple days later he brought hundreds of poor men, women and children into the church. The soldiers asked what was going on.
“I brought our most valuable treasure, the people.” Lawrence was martyred for his trouble.
He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor, his righteousness endures forever.
I imagine Lawrence played with the children of his parish every day, reminded by the kiddos that God’s world exists now, always in the now. That is certainly what I am learning. Together they learned God’s sacrament of the present moment. Together they pursued God and chased each other, playing tag, hide and seek, and falling on their knees now and then to pray. Such a good life they must have lived together.
Lawrence was tied to a hot gridiron and burned. I hope the kids didn’t have to watch. But after awhile of slow roasting, Lawrence said, “I am well done on this side. Turn me over!”
The one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
(2 Corinthians 9, Psalm 112, John 8, John 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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