Friday, December 15, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Living in borrowed time
I teach you what is for your good and lead you on the way you should go.
Yesterday and today we’ll be leaving Urbana and returning first to Lincoln, then to Springfield, then to Austin. Back to the life we live most of the time. Urbana feels like home, though, as much or more than Austin, and hopefully this summer we’ll get to spend a couple of months here.
From what I hear most couples who have two places to live get mixed up on a regular basis about what is where and even where is where. For me that potential confusion is also an opportunity to settle a little deeper into the uncertainty that is the skeleton that holds my life together.
I think I live simultaneously in two time zones. There is the zone of the present, in which I might just settle down in my warm bed under an electric blanket and, on any God-given day, not wake up, pass away, leave this ancient earth and veer away into heaven.
Heaven, which, for me, loses its definition the more it is defined. I don’t KNOW, and in that unknowing I can rest. Specifics about how and what and where we’ll spend eternity, which many of us crave and claim, make me uncomfortable in my seat, wriggling, seeking the peace that comes from uncertainty. This is the rare, bare, apophatic country of belief, and I like spending at least some time there. The skill of knowing has little place, but the gift of belief abounds and I feel blessed by it.
There is also the time zone of the future, which rears up as 2024 is just two weeks away. Next year! What plans, what plans, what plans? I’m a Myers-Briggs ENFJ, and that J says I plan, like to plan, am good at planning, have a record of some success. Plan our future, where we’ll spend next year, where we’ll go, what books I’ll read.
My rule of life (Read-Write-Listen-Pray-Every Day) can go many ways, take several shapes … and I can plan some of that. It’s fun for me, and it’s also fun to have a plan so it can change. 168 hours every week. In the morning, when I rise, new life also rises. Generally I am happy to take a few deep breaths, say hello to Jesus, pray the Our Father and see what happens next. I feel grateful I can talk to a few folks as a counselor or spiritual director, happy to have a car which takes us to a doctor or a friend or to Andi’s house, HEB or Trader Joe’s. Or from Austin to Urbana. Or from Urbana to Austin.
My friend Chris in India asked me what someone asked him: at the end of the year, do you tend to reflect on the past year or plan the next? How about you? How do those two time zones play off each other as you breathe in and breathe out?
Our friend Susan invited us to pray for our friends by simply believing they are in God’s presence, are loved by God, and need nothing more. Their illness or poverty or pain is, we say, “in God’s hands.” This is the most true and clean prayer I know.
If you hearken to my commandments, your prosperity will be like a river and your vindication like the waves of the sea. Those who follow me will have the light of life.
Of course all of my time is borrowed time. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed is the name of the Lord. This truth becomes more visceral as I grow older. There is no hurry, not really, and there never has been.
Still, I know what I’ll do next, when I’ve written this, who I hope to see, what I hope to do, and even what I’ll have to eat. God made us all co-creators, and we have more or less permission to flesh that out. So as best I can, I will do just that.
Blessed are you who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on his law day and night. You are like a tree planted near running water – yielding your fruit, your leaves never fading.
 (Isaiah 48, Psalm 1, Matthew 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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