Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 17, 2024
My birthday (1949)
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Travel
At that time your people shall escape.
Our friends Don and Pat are driving to Florida from Wisconsin this week. They start out today (on my 75th birthday)! Margaret and I are headed to Urbana from Austin later this week. Stefan’s mother is coming to Austin for Thanksgiving – she’ll arrive on Wednesday from South Africa. Our friends Mike and Diane will visit their niece in north Texas. And I’m sure you know plenty of folks that are also headed away from home in the next few weeks. It’s holiday time, and Thanksgiving is on the doorstep.
Many of those who sleep shall awake, and the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament. Those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever.
At our Grace Covenant Church our adult classes are over today, and although some will continue meeting for a couple more weeks, they will soon bend to the fact that many of their class members will be gone here and then between now and Christmas. Our Christmas party and concert are scheduled. The sing-along Messiah we’ve sung along with for two years (or maybe three?) comes up in early December. We are planning to see a Christmas parade with Miles and Jasper, along with their surrogate grandparents Mike and Diane.
Mike and Diane joined us at Perry’s Steakhouse on Friday. Fridays are Adventure Days for the boys, so they came along. They skipped the kids’ menu and shared a 3 inch pork chop, and the adults each had one too. Those big steak knives were a little magical for Miles and Jasper; they couldn’t quite believe they had them in their hands. But they knew what to do, and they cut the meat, and ate it. Although the bread and potatoes filled them up.
Afterward we spent an hour or so at a wonderful nearby playground with a covered curvy slide and unusual swings. They dug awhile in the dirt with sticks and made a “pit.” After they abandoned their dig Diane put some quarters and dimes and pennies in the dirt and covered them up. When they came back to dig some more they started screaming. They couldn’t believe it. Pirate treasure! They put the treasure in their pockets and we went home, our adventure finished for the day.
Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to stand before the Son of Man.
On these Fridays I find it difficult to think of falling upward, of Jesus’ path of descent, and our need to notice our own opportunities to go down down down. I think of Robert Wicks’ favorite metaphor of the basement, and his need to continue descending in his prayers and  experience. He spent years ministering to firemen and others who nearly lost their lives at the Twin Towers on September 9, 2001. All of them, or nearly all, suffered from PTSD.
I think of Peter Enn’s similar image of a mining train falling down the track, sometimes under control but often not. I want the courage to get into that train, knowing that it will speed through the darkness into a black hole.
The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens shall be shaken.
Every time I head up I 35 from Austin toward Dallas, I know I might encounter anything, sometimes trouble that causes me pain or sadness, or at least delay. I don’t invite these events but I don’t shrink from the trips, either. The whole of life is more a mining train than the Orient Express, and I know that in the Wicks basement we gradually grow accustomed to the dark and begin to see with our spiritual eyes what God has in store for us.
You will show me the path of life.
Do not be afraid.
Let the road take you where it will, and make each turn expecting God to appear, one way or another. It’s easy to say, but as I get older, it’s also easier to do.
(Daniel 12, Psalm 16, Hebrews 10, Luke 21, Mark 13)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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