Saturday, March 1, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Getting late
God from the earth created man,
and in his own image he made him.
He makes man return to earth again,
and endows him with a strength of his own.
Limited days of life he gives him.
It’s getting late on Friday night in Austin. At HEB this morning I asked Steve, my checker, about his life. My life starts tonight, he said, after I get out of work. Got plans? Well, I might just go home and crash, because I didn’t get any sleep last night. I need to do my taxes, I said. That will keep me up late. Ah, me too! he said, and smiled. Now 12 hours later, here I am staying up late too, and the tax forms are nowhere to be seen. I still have plenty of time.
Sometimes it just takes awhile to get started writing. I got back Thursday night at 7 pm after 12 hours of driving, pleasant enough except for a couple slow-downs as the weather got warmer, from 40 degrees Wednesday morning in Illinois to 74 degrees Thursday afternoon in Texas. When the cars and trucks stopped on Interstate 30, and then again on I 20 and a third time on I 35, I opened the window, put out my arm on the warm car, and rested. Relax, Dave. Leave the driving to …
That was how the Greyhound bus ads invited us, decades ago. This was better, at least for me. I drove and drove, I listened to …
history and war (The Guns of August),
fantasy (The Return of the King),
mystery and murder (Sherlock Holmes and the Telegram from Hell),
spiritual education (Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening),
biography (The Hidden Life of John Le Carré)
spy novel (The Looking-Glass War).
And I had time for music, quiet time and prayer. For me, it doesn’t get any better than that.
But now, on this Friday night, I’m ready to sleep all night again and not be in much of a hurry to get up on Saturday morning. Friday Margaret and I spent a couple of hours at the Krispy Kreme factory – coffee and donuts, a little talk about money, a little prayer, reading parts of a couple of devotions, and then a car wash … ah! I could hear the car sigh with delight. All that road sand and salt, grime and grease, gone!
Their ways are ever known to him,
they cannot be hidden from his eyes.
All their actions are clear as the sun to him,
his eyes are ever upon their ways.
As is often the case, Steve Garnaas-Holmes captures much of the magic I rejoice in during these trips I make:
Listen
The command is not to believe,
or even to remember,
but to listen.
In stillness,
apart from the screaming news,
listen.
Let your fears and opinions
sit quietly in the corner
and talk amongst themselves;
let them go; ignore them.
In silence, listen
even if only to the sound
of your own breathing, listen
for the silence
that is God,
the cloud
that is unknowing,
the presence
you can trust without feeling.
And if nothing comes to you,
keep the silence.
Honor the cloud.
Keep listening. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes
(Sirach 17, Psalm 103, Matthew 11, Mark 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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