Some times

Thursday, July 25, 2024

Feast of Saint James, Apostle

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Some times

Here I am looking around for something to hold on to while waiting for Jesus’ return.

Looking for truth, like …

STILLNESS

Sometimes you set down

the hammer and trowel of your prayers

and sleep under the stars unsheltered,

possibility your only roof.

Sometimes you lay your forehead against the silence

and close your eyes.

Sometimes you walk out along the prairie

listening to that sound

for miles and miles.

Sometimes you curl up in bed with God

and just hold each other.

Sometimes you lay your hand on a rock

long enough for it to feel your pulse

and know everything about you.

Sometimes you imagine the stars

looking up at you

and you are humbled and calmed.

Sometimes you walk among green living things

and you are one of them.

Sometimes you hold your hand out

and the bird never comes

and the stillness is beautiful,

and you go inside,

and even later you walk around

with that stillness in your hand.

I can hold onto that, swimming in words that warm me and wrestle with me and hold me close.

We hold God’s treasure in earthen vessels.

My earthen-ness reminds me that it’s God’s treasure, given only for awhile.

We are afflicted but not constrained, perplexed but not driven to despair, persecuted but not abandoned and struck down, but never destroyed.

Paul has a beautiful way of explaining how this always-on-the-edge life can be sustained, how we can embrace it every moment of every day, sunny or dark.

We always carry about in our body the DEATH of Jesus, so that the LIFE of Jesus may also be there.

This is not just for a little while, but for the whole of the life we’re given on earth.

We who live are constantly being given up to death for the sake of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be ours also. The one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also. Let our thanksgiving overflow for the glory of God.

Quiet gradually appears within me. My lists of projects, activities, people to see and places to go whittles on down if I work at it. But sometimes I become anxious, because the whittling seems so little and the piling up seems so great. Ah, yes, this is the way of life for those of us whose bodies are wearing out.

But no matter. Because the quiet speaks louder than all my noisy words of anxious struggling after the finally perfect house, the rich mutual relationships, and the emptied bucket list of cities, states and countries with all their tourist bureaus. Louder than church work, or charity work, or any of the work I wish I had time to do.

Anxiety, where have you disappeared to? Don’t you want to know the truth?

Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant. Look at Jesus, who did not come to be served but to serve and then give his life as a ransom for many.

In the meantime I will stay a little busy working, and a little more breathing deep the peace.

I chose you from the world to go and bear fruit that will last, says the Lord.

(2 Corinthians 4, Psalm 126, John 15, Matthew 20)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

#