Thursday, December 15, 2022
Sharing the lights
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back. Angry, for a moment I hid my face from you, but with lasting love I take pity on you.
Moments of anger in a lifetime of love. That’s how God describes himself, and it’s the way we experience our most enduring relationships with each other, too. Moments of anger in a lifetime of love.
Love means so many things. I love my English muffin with Margaret’s strawberry jam. I love my sister. I love Margaret. I love Miles and Jasper, one at a time and two at a time. I love my daughter. I love applesauce and cottage cheese.
In my forty-four years with Margaret we have been caught up in the five loves: epithumia (intense physical desire), eros (the life force behind romance), storge (safety and belonging), phileo (friendship of companions), and agape (commitment, every day – showing up). In short, we have loved each other up and down the highway, through every experience we’ve been given, every day after every day. Sometimes our love is sweet and tender, sometimes not so much. And how good it is to be loved by you.
And where do we learn this art of loving day in and day out? Where else but from the One who made us? There is no other. How sweet it is to be Loved by You.
Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, my love shall never leave you nor my covenant of peace be shaken. I will have mercy on you, says the Lord.
Several friends have lost their partners in the last year. We are getting older. Some of us get sick, some of us die. Accidents happen. Year by year, I feel the edges of my body differently. They are not so smooth. I feel bruised, or sore, or stiff.
So that’s part of what I share with Margaret, and what she shares with me. We think less about traveling and more about travel shows, and we remember the places we’ve seen. We spend money on groceries rather than restaurants. And we are grateful for the quiet circle we can make, walking around our apartment complex, when the sky is blue and the air is clear. Like today, for example.
His anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
Wednesday morning we took lots of pictures of Andi, ACS art teacher, at their chapel service and game time for the teachers, who all got dressed up. She was a Christmas tree in lights, and she skipped and leaped and laughed all the way to the stage. On the way she shared her lights with a first year upper school administrator who didn’t realize how seriously the staff took this Christmas responsibility. He did a little skipping too, after his lights blinked on.
Jesus spoke to the crowds about John. “What did you go out to the desert to see, a reed swayed by the wind?”
In the afternoon Jasper and I tried flying our fancy kite, swayed by the wind and unhindered by roots of any kind. But it wasn’t windy enough. Then it was too windy, and our kite was swallowed by a bare tree in the parking lot behind our apartment. Then the tree spit the kite right out, and we gathered it up for repairs. So much color up against the blue blue sky, so much string almost tangled on the ground, so much kite. Let’s go fly. It won’t be long before we try it again!
Our friend Dan remembered another song from Mary Poppins yesterday on Facebook. We laughed and laughed, along with Keenan Wynn and Dick Van Dyke. Click it if you dare.
Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. We will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued us.
(Isaiah 54, Psalm 30, Luke 3, Luke 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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