Friday, May 28, 2021                         (today’s lectionary)
The glory of all his faithful
Let us now praise those godly men, each in his own time. But of others there is no memory, for when they ceased, they ceased, and they are as though they had not lived.
Oh, boy, I don’t want to be one of those guys. I want to set my face like flint, watch God for guidance, serve rather than be served, finish the race, be faithful unto death.
Yet these were also godly men with virtues not forgotten. For all time their family endures, their glory is never blotted out.
So there are the earth-shakers and the family leaders, the loud ones and the quiet ones. Maybe I do want to be one of those guys. Especially now in the second half of life, I don’t much value the trappings of success, piling up a bunch of money or collecting trophies. Just give me a quiet corner to pray and worship, read and write, play the music of life on any instrument that comes to hand.
This is the glory of all his faithful. The Lord takes delight in his people.
We spent yesterday morning at “Play for All Abilities” park in Round Rock. Friendly folks all around, kids of all ages (and abilities), first we snacked and then we found the playground. Miles headed for the zip lines, and he took some turns on the chair, screaming happy bloody murder. A blonde a bit older than Miles zoomed back and forth on the dish she sat on, pushed along by her older sisters.
Later we explored the Town Center at the park. In the doctor’s office we found some posters of muscle and nervous systems, and an eye chart. I asked Miles if he could read the letters, but he wasn’t interested. We saw our friends from the zip line and said hello. I said to no one in particular, “I’ll bet she can read those letters” as I was walking out.
The sisters looked at Margaret and said, “Oh, she can’t see.”
Never would have guessed. I wasn’t paying enough attention. She could not see! She couldn’t see her own cute blond hair and perky red dress. She couldn’t see us, and she couldn’t read the letters on the eye chart.
Whoever says to this mountain, “Be lifted up and thrown into the sea” and does not doubt in his heart but believes what he says will happen, it shall be done for him.
Jesus tells stories and paints word pictures that knock his lessons out of the park. Believe and ask, and you’ll get what you ask for. Oh, Lord, will you heal our daughter’s eyes? Our friend’s parents might have beseeched God for their daughter’s healing. They must have. Believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours.
“Our sister can’t see.” The teenagers with her prayed too. Will her eyes be healed one day? Jesus seems to say they will. He pushed back hard on Peter and many others, calling them “ye of little faith.” I say sometimes I want to know more about this kind of faith. And the examples I know of in the Bible and in the lives of my friends and family mostly tend toward crisis and catastrophe, toward a fiery furnace or roaring lions.
However, the faith I admire most is the more common faith of family leaders, the quiet ones on Sirach’s list. This is the glory of all his faithful.
Through God’s covenant with them their families endure, their posterity.
Sometimes there is great drama and surprise in the touch of God upon his children, healing that rises up and transforms us. Then much more often we are left alone with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, calling on and receiving God’s blessing and peace in spite of our circumstances, in spite of our blindness, resting on our prayer, knowing day by day how much we’re loved.
(Sirach 44, Psalm 149, John 18, Mark 11)
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