Friday, January 26, 2024
Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, bishops
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Passing it on
To my dear child, I am grateful to God as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day. I yearn to see you again, so that I may be filled with joy as I recall your sincere faith.
Paul writes to Timothy, and his beautiful words fill me with hope, for my sons and daughter and their partners, for my grandkids and their already (in my mind) but not yet children, for the past and present and coming generations of our family. But not only for them, also for those families around me that I don’t know, and those that I do.
One of my friends has two children. Actually, they are no longer children, but beginning adulthood. His older son has a drinking problem, it is hard for him to hold down a job, he gets angry and loses friends, his girlfriend is patient but who knows for how long, his childhood faith has atrophied, and he relies on his dad for rides to and from work.
His younger daughter is an honor student, marched in the high school marching band in the Orange Bowl parade, has traveled to Europe with her band, is in the honor society and is jumping at the chance to study in college. It won’t be long now.
My friend loves to cook, and to fill his house with wonderful smells. Both of his children love to eat, and they absolutely love his cooking.
I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. Do not be ashamed. Share your stories, and mine, and bear your share of hardship with strength that comes from God.
His kids (sorry – adult kids) will share their stories over and over as they live their years here on earth. The listeners, all of them so different themselves (and with their own families in the back of their mind), will judge, color, shape, interpret what they hear and screen it all through personal filters that themselves might have not been cleaned lately.
What can he do? What can I do?
My friend worries, and he is proud, as we all are when we can be. He knows more and more from experience that he can control his emotions and thoughts, but not the world around him. His parenting comes more from a distance these days. His job as a dad is to love, love, love, love. Love, love love.
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have revealed to little ones the mystery of the Kingdom.
With the foundation of this “mystery,” all is well.
Without that foundation, or its denial, well … what do you put in its place.
Jesus came and saw all of this, all the good girls and the bad boys, all the generations of children growing into adults into parents into old folks who need their kids to help them to the bathroom:
This is how it is with the Kingdom of God;
it is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land
and would sleep and rise night and day
and the seed would sprout and grow,
he knows not how.
Of its own accord the land yields fruit,
first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.
And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once,
for the harvest has come.
Isn’t this just the way of things? And aren’t we here to put in our two cents, flex our muscles just a bit, do what we can? It is good to spend time with my friend, and learn from him, how he does this thing in his life.
Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all you lands. Sing to the Lord, and bless his name.
(2 Timothy 1, Titus 1, Psalm 96, Matthew 11, Mark 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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