Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 26, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests
Yesterday the weather broke in Urbana, with a little rain and predicted sunny days and reasonable summer temperatures for a week or so. It was a pleasure to be outside yesterday morning, while Margaret cut what little hair I have to cut. Austin looks to get a little break next week as well. The corn will be knee high by the fourth of July (already is), high as an elephant’s eye (getting there) by mid-month, and it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky.
Oh, what a beautiful morning!
Margaret’s garden is growing right outside her kitchen window. The garden needs more sun; Marc and I trimmed some trees. We are watching the sun’s path as it tracks across the sky, to see if we can trim some more.
Dad planted cucumbers every year, and Mom made bread and butter pickles, sliced thin. Margaret’s mom made sweet pickles, which were the talk of the town. These summer days make those cucumbers grow big and fast.
Elisha was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen, and Elijah went over and threw his cloak over him. Elisha left the oxen, ran after Elijah and said, “Please let me kiss my father and mother goodbye, and I will follow you.”
That is a hard moment. God’s call to my own path is clear. I am very happy at home eating my mother’s pickles on warm homemade bread covered with churned butter from our dairy cows. Then the cloak gets thrown over my head.
What is happening? How do I do this? My childhood is over, and I have no idea what this next thing is. My mother might weep, my father won’t have me to help him, and I feel guilty about all of it.
Keep me O God, for in you I take refuge; you are my allotted portion and my cup. It is you who holds fast my lot. You are my inheritance, O Lord.
In the old days I could hitchhike from place to place across the country, and I did. I could hear the train whistle as it passed along the south edge of our farm, and a few miles away trucks and cars raced across Illinois on Route 66. We took a week or two in August for family vacation, to the Ozarks in Missouri or the Great Lakes in Michigan or the cities and beaches of New York and Rhode Island. We toured the museums and historic buildings of Washington DC.
I bless the Lord who counsels me; even in the night my heart exhorts me. I set the Lord ever before me; with him at my right hand I shall not be afraid.
So often I wanted to be anywhere but in central Illinois, doing anything but farming. What was wrong with me? Nothing much was wrong with the world, but I didn’t settle into it. My parents bought a World Book Encyclopedia. I read the articles about space and the final frontier. Inside one of the covers I wrote my complete address: David Sandel, Rural Route 2, Lincoln, Illinois, USA, North America, northern hemisphere, Earth, the Solar System, Milky Way, the Universe, God’s Hand.
Maybe God was throwing his cloak over my head. I went to Valparaiso the Lutheran university, and in the next ten years lived sixteen places around the country and the world. I probably forgot some others. In 1978 I hitchhiked from New York to Rhode Island, where my parents met me and drove me home, quiet, chastened, in the back seat of their car. They were so happy to see me. I was not so sure. Who am I and where am I going?
Brothers and sisters, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. So stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. For brothers and sisters, you were called to freedom. So serve one another in love.
I don’t ask those questions now, even though I haven’t answered them. The cloak is over my head, and I’ll just leave it there. God does the guiding. What I prayed yesterday I still believe today:
We have all we need. We must not mistake either persecution or prosperity, neither comfort nor suffering, for your eternal gifts, which are all in place forever.
There was a time set out for Jesus to make his way to the cross. He knew when that time came. He did not hesitate to “go and bury my father,” or to “say farewell to my family at home.”
He resolutely determined to make the journey to Jerusalem, and he sent messengers ahead of him.
What is man that thou art mindful of him? There is something about how God made us out of nothing, and how he communicates with us, that gives God’s love strength, sinew, permanence and unconditionality in every one of our lives. There are points at which I might move away from him, but he never moves away from me.
(1 Kings 19, Psalm 16, Galatians 5, 1 Samuel 3, Luke 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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