Saturday, September 28, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Putzing
Follow the ways of your heart and vision of your eyes, but understand that God will bring you to judgment.
During her college years, Christina Cannon took a trip on Route 66. She discovered a faith within herself that surprised her. She realized she was not the first:
In his Faith on the Road: A Short Theology of Travel and Justice, Joerg Rieger observes that if you took out the stories in the Bible that deal with travel, there would be little left. The story of Israel began with Abraham, a traveling emigrant, leaving his home and family. Refugee Israelites followed the path set by a pillar of fire and cloud for decades. It is estimated that Jesus walked twenty miles a day during his ministry in Galilee. Rieger contends that “Christianity is not primarily a matter of pews and buildings; Christianity is a matter of the road.”
Twenty miles a day! At least once carrying a Roman’s armor for an extra mile. This Christian road pushes through time and place, and has lasted far longer than either the Roman or the Silk Road.
Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.
Every day, every mile, every season of every year. My guitar mentor Chad taught me the guitar licks for “April, Come She Will,” Simon and Garfunkel’s ode to loss in a minor key, honoring falling leaves and falling hopes. But autumn is beautiful. Thousands of us take trips to see the magic of red and brown forests, dappled in green. When we recognize it, the stillness outside reflects our own patience with the passages of life.
Autumn Goodness
Today, the Immense Goodness spewed from the depths
like juice from a fully ripe piece of fruit
on the tip of God’s tongue
so close I can touch it
see it, smell it
experience its transition
as another leaf falls and
others deepen their hue before my eyes
if dying can be so beautiful
then let me die also
perfect imperfection of individuality
I too yearn to be an instrument of love
past and future converge in the present
never stopping, but pausing to notice
that God is here among us – Clarence Heller
Paul cherished his life with the Philippians but couldn’t wait to meet Jesus in the next life. Henri Nouwen felt much the same way:
Looking from above, life is a short, often painful mission, full of occasions to do fruitful work for God’s kingdom, and death is the open door that leads into the hall of celebration where the king himself will serve us. Yet still we resist. It all seems such an upside-down way of being! But it’s the way of Jesus and the way for us to follow.
Peter Enns finds a refreshing honesty in the words of Qoheleth (the preacher in Ecclesiastes), as he faces his own autumn and finally his death.
He looked life square in the eye and refused to play the religion game, where everything is working out and God makes sense. I’m drawn to the fact that he is saying what we all feel, at least now and then.
It’s hard to keep trusting God when you see no reason to. Yet that is a profound paradox of faith in the book of Ecclesiastes. No matter how deep distrust and disillusionment may be, move toward God in trust anyway.
This is how faith looks when all you thought you knew about God and how the world works is ripped from you, when certainty vanishes like a vapor. (Sin of Certainty, p 78-80)
I love the cool air, and the bright brown and red trees, and the approach of Advent, which itself marks the approach of Christmas. I love knowing that God, and his Word, insist that I let time pass, take its toll and carry me home. I am glad we, none of us, are ever alone.
Your turn men back to dust, for a thousand years in your sight are as yesterday, now that it is past, or as a watch in the night. Teach us to number our days aright, fill us at daybreak with your kindness, and proper the work of our hands.
Even when we think we’re just putzing, you make all things new.
(Ecclesiastes 11, Psalm 90, 2 Timothy 1, Luke 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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