Thursday, March 2, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
On earth and as it is in heaven
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened unto you.
Outside the Bass Pro Shop, where we went with Jasper yesterday morning, redbuds were in full bloom, their lavender and pink blossoms beautiful, but early. A month early.
Driving back from our volunteer stint at ADRN’s thrift store on Tuesday, Aki was the first to see small gatherings of bluebonnets along the highway. Early.
Temperatures have settled into the 80’s for the most part in Austin. WHAT? If I wasn’t so surprised and nervous about what this means for May and June, I’d be happy. Actually, I’m happy anyway. We are testing the pool water temps, wearing summer clothes, and thinking about picnics, playgrounds, and family pictures in the bluebonnets.
The Lord will complete what he has done for me; your kindness, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.
Lent’s invitation extends deeper than the weather. I catch glimpses of what God calls me into, and those glimpses turn my eyes away from my busy-ness, the possibilities of more busy-ness, and all the Stuff that seems to need constant rearranging in my life.
When did the collision between our appetites and the needs of our souls happen? Was there a heart attack? Did we get laid off from work, one of the thousands certified as extraneous? Did a beloved child become a bored stranger, a marriage fall silent and cold? Or, by some exquisite working of God’s grace, did we just find the courage to look the truth in the eye and, for once, not blink? How did we come to know that we were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the only way back to life was to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really needed?
I don’t need to wait for a crisis. And I can’t wait till I have more time, because that will never be. I can fill many more moments than I have. But I don’t want to. Jesus had more to do in his life than he could ever complete. His plans (or at least the plans of his disciples) were interrupted, and in a flash, his ministry to us on earth ended.
When Jesus began his ministry again, he had died and returned resurrected to his life, setting the standard for all of us. His words and the events that happen around them profoundly change far more folks than just those who heard them.
I wonder how my life fits into that template. The power of any life on earth extends upward into heaven and outward, always outward, endowed with spiritual wisdom and words that don’t exactly get “said,” but lived. How those vibrations change the world around me isn’t for me to see, even as I know the changes are happening. I know that God does the work … for all of us, as it was, is now and ever shall be.
For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks the door will be opened. Which one of you would hand his son a stone, when he asked for a loaf of bread.
Barbara ends her thoughts above with a prayer:
We travail. We are heavy laden. Refresh us, O homeless, jobless, possession-less Savior. You came naked, and naked you go. And so it is for us. So it is for all of us.
(Esther C, Psalm 138, Psalm 51, Matthew 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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