Light Dawns
In 2007, 4-year-old Ivan Aguilar-Cano disappeared while playing outside his house near Churchill Downs, in Louisville, Kentucky. On Friday, December 17, 2010, Cecil New, who had pled guilty to abducting Ivan, plying him with alcohol, and sexually abusing him before killing him and putting his body in a dumpster, was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In passing sentence, Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman stated, “Death is undoubtedly justified for you. . . . There’s not one cell in your body, Cecil New, that can be rehabilitated, not one. But is a death sentence justice?” She added that she hoped, “This sentence pales in comparison to what you will receive ultimately from up above” (Quotes from the Courier-Journal, December 17, 2010). Given the heinous nature of Mr. New’s crime, such comments are understandable; but they ought not to come from the bench; and they certainly fly in the face of all that the Christ whose birth is celebrated at Christmas teaches us.
Matthew’s gospel proclaims the child born in Bethlehem to be Emmanuel—“which, being interpreted, is God with us” (1:23 KJV). The grown-up Jesus called on us to love our enemies (5:43ff) . . . he bade all who were burdened to come unto him and there find rest (11:28-30). The God revealed in Jesus the Christ is a God who believes that redemption is in reach of all people and who desires that none should perish.
Isaiah wrote, “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined” (Isaiah 9:2 KJV). Christians have long seen in Isaiah’s word a foreshadowing, if not a foretelling, of the Messiah’s birth. Christmas is the story of the Light having dawned, of God having come to be with us. Crimes, heinous ones like that committed by Mr. New and the less heinous committed by many others, should not and do not go unpunished. Wherever the Light shines, crimes great and small cannot stay hidden. I wonder sometimes if our harsh punishment of the crimes of others is in part an effort to hide our own crimes. We do well to remember that in God’s economy, punishment’s aim is redemption and rehabilitation. Whatever punishment society may choose to inflict on those judged guilty should never preclude the possibility of redemption and rehabilitation.
I am not soft on crime; but neither am I soft on the sin, the perpetrator’s or mine, that often lies beneath the surface of crimes committed. What, I wonder, is there in society and in the hearts of men and women that leads to the sexual abuse and killing of children? I confess to having no clue beyond sin. I don’t understand it . . . cannot fathom it.
The heinous nature of Mr. New’s crime, the understandable but most unchristian response of the judge, and my inability to understand how we as God’s creation can fall to such depths would leave me in despair were it not for the Light that has dawned.
Christmas brings the good news that sinners like Cecil New and like you and me can be redeemed . . . are in fact being redeemed. The Bread and the Cup of Communion, so often received in the Christmas season, are reminders of redemption’s price. We who have such a priceless gift ought never to deny it to others.
Halleluiah! A Child is born and He is Emmanuel.
Files, Files and more Files
Files multiply like rabbits. We create them daily, whether they are word processing docs, PDFs, photos, videos or music files. We make notes to ourselves, store our logins to websites, wifi hotspots and more. Over time, these files just pile up, and they may even become hard to find — or worse, at risk of loss.
I’m writing this near the end of the year, a great time to do some annual clean-up of your file storage, to make sure your back-up strategy is working, and to do better file sharing. This article offers tips for each of these.
Storing and Finding
Disk drives are larger and less expensive than ever before, and truthfully, unless you are shooting a lot of videos, your files take up a very small amount of space. More important is the ability to find what you need.
One time-honored approach is to keep files neatly stored in their appropriate folders. And if you are the neat and organized sort of person, you’re likely already doing this.
However, it still can be hard to find a file (perhaps you look for a file that is over a year old), because you aren’t sure into which folder you placed it. What seemed like an obvious spot a year ago, is now a mystery.
Or, you may be the messy type. Moving fast, you drop files on your desktop with abandon, and then, when the clutter becomes overwhelming, you shove the pile of files into a folder and promise to go look through them later (which seldom comes).
The good news is that search tech has gotten really good, and really fast. Whether you are the organized or the messy sort, powerful file search tools are really handy.
If you are on Mac OS X or Windows 7, you have access to the built-in search tools. (In OS X It’s the little Spotlight magnifying glass in the upper right corner of your screen. In Windows 7, just use the search box in the Start menu). Whatever you type in the box is searched across all file types, and not just the file names, but what’s inside the files too. So if you can’t remember a file name or where you placed it, you can just search for a word (or set of words) that you know are in that file, and boom… it’s found. These work on connected external drives too.
Storing Other Data
All of us generate a ton of login data across time. Logins for websites, licenses for software, logins for wifi hotspots, and on and on. Keeping up with these can be a real chore. Rather than seeing each item of data as an opportunity for a new file, I recommend using a program that’s designed as a catch-all for these bits of info.
There are a lot of good programs out there to help with this task, and most allow you to not only store login and license data, but also webpage content, screenshots, URLs, graphics, recipes, how-to steps, model numbers and pretty much anything else you can think of.
My favorite tool for this is Evernote. Evernote has a free version that’s great for most people, and if you are a heavy user (or want enhanced data security), there’s a very affordable upgrade. Evernote will capture and hold files, text, images, photos, webpages, audio recordings, and more. When you name an entry, you can also tag it. Or, you can be lazy (like me) and just make sure the main words you’d use to later search for this info are somewhere in the note. When you search, Evernote searches the full contents of your notes, and not just the titles or tags. If you have multiple computers, Evernote will keep your notes synced across them. There are also mobile versions for iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Android and more. Check it out.
Backup. Backup. Backup.
Any hard drive can fail. Most eventually do. Even the new SSD drives can fail. The only way to prevent data loss when a drive fails, is to have a good backup handy.
Setting up an automatic backup routine is the best way to ensure your data will be protected. There are tons of programs for any OS that will allow you to schedule a regular backup to an external drive. And, external hard drives are really affordable these days.
Laptop users have a harder time with automatic backups than desktop users, since the laptop may or may not end up at the same location each day. In that case, get one of the smaller, more portable drives (some are smaller than a deck of cards) to keep in your laptop bag, and choose at least one day a week to do a backup.
Another approach to backup is to use an online backup option. If you are only wanting to backup files, DropBox is a great option. For larger backups, you can try a service such as Carbonite.
When You Want to Share
In the good old days, sharing files with others usually involved a floppy disk of some sort. Then, flash drives became popular. Or, you could email files.
I’ve become a Dropbox fanatic. That’s because I share a lot of files. Sometimes I share files with others, and sometimes it’s between my desktop, my laptop and my iPad. Dropbox is the easiest and fastest way I’ve found to share files. There’s a free version that will do what most people need, and if you want more space, it’s available for a modest fee.
Here are some ways I use Dropbox:
- I keep all of my current working project folders in Dropbox. This way, it doesn’t matter what computer I’m working on, I can get to the same files. No moving files around or worrying which is the latest version.
- I share files with others. Last week my 16 year old daughter was working on a photo slideshow for church, and she needed some photos from me. Too many to email, and (since I’m lazy) I didn’t want to get off the sofa. So I just dropped the files in a folder called “Photos for Megan,” and shared that folder with her. In minutes, the photos were in her Dropbox folder, and she just dropped them in her slideshow.
- Peace of mind. Because Dropbox keeps a copy of the files both on my computer(s) and on their server, I don’t have to worry about losing those files. If my hard drive crashes, I just pop a new drive in, and login to Dropbox. In minutes, my files are available to me again as if nothing had happened.
Files, files, files. They’re everywhere. But they don’t have to create chaos. I hope some of these tips help you tame your files!
Got your own file tricks and tips or favorite programs? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.
A Good Deal?
I have a great investment deal for all of you. I realize that we usually don’t discuss and, certainly, do not handle money on Shabbat, but I cannot contain myself. I have to tell you about this great opportunity.
Here it is: I will guarantee a 10% return on your investment. That is, if you give me $10, I will give you $1. If you give me $100, I will give you $10 and so on. Of course, if you give me $10, I will keep $9, if you give me $100, I will keep $90, and so on. But this is a great deal! I will give %10 back of every thing you give me!
OK, everyone who is going to show up at my place after Shabbat is over to take advantage of this wonderful offer, raise your hands…..I mean now….a show of hands of those who want to take advantage of this once in a life time opportunity!
Hmmmmm, not too many hands. Clearly you do not think this is a good deal, this idea that if you give me something, I give you %10 back and keep the rest. You, with your merely human minds, recognize that this is a silly offer, a scam so ridiculous it evokes laughter rather than anger.
After Jacob’s dream of the the ladder stretching from Earth to Heaven, with angels ascending and descending, he awoke and dedicated a pillar and offered G-D a deal.
Jacob then made this vow: “If G-D is with me and watches over me on this path that I am taking and gives me bread to eat and clothes to wear, and if I return safely to my father’s house, then will The Eternal be my G-D; and this stone I have set up as a monument shall be a house of G-D. And of all that you give me, I will dedicate a tenth to You.” (Gen. 28:20-22)
Perhaps there is a missing part of Jacob’s offer where he throws in some beach front property in Arizona. Does Jacob think G-D is stupid? Why in the world would G-D, as G-D apparently does, agree to this deal? What is in it for G-D?
Certainly it is not the return of the 10% that G-D has given Jacob, neither can The Creator of Heaven and Earth need Jacob to commit to worship-even if one does not want to posit the self sufficiency of The Most High (which begs the question of why create the universe after all), a few impressive special effects and
G-D can have all the followers G-D may desire. Could it be G-D’s commitment to Abraham? Surely if Sarah could have a kid at 90, Rebecca could incubate a replacement for Jacob. Why?
I will suggest a few possible reasons. First, Jacob has potential. OK, he is a bit of momma’s boy, not necessarily a bad thing in modern Jewish culture, he tricked his father, and ran from his twin brother in fear because of it. Yet, he has potential. He will grow and change and become a better person. We learn here that G-D meets us where we are, not only where G-D wants us to be. In our flawed and broken state, G-D continually reaches out to us to help us grow into our potential. As I tell my students, you are in class to learn, I do not expect you to already know the material. So too, G-D helps us to grow into greater worthiness, not requiring that we be so wonderful to start with.
Jacob recognizes his dependence on G-D, from the food he eats to the clothes he wears to his very life and safety. In this recognition, Jacob already has an insight. Though he states it as a deal, he surely sees that he has been living in this dependent state his whole life. In the seeming con job that Jacob is pulling off, he explicitly acknowledges that he can not give to G-D anything that G-D has not already given to him. Thus, we are taught the lesson of our own contingency.
Finally, if we believe, as I do, that our job is the repair of our broken world and to act as co-creators of a better future, G-D must start with something, even with such imperfect and broken tools as we. We get to watch as Jacob grows into his role and, for all of his flaws, father our people as a house of servants to G-D. We learn that even the broken are beloved of G-D and can do great things in G-D’s service.
The deal is not what matters to G-D. The Eternal is already helping Jacob, materially and in laying the ground work for his future growth. G-D has already promised to help more.
We can see lots of nasty things in Jacob, but, in some ways, that is exactly the point. We learn that G-D meets us where we are at, wherever that might be, that we need to be aware of our contingency and dependence, and find that the mission of our lives is not too great for us-each of us will change and grow into our tasks and that will be good enough.
Appreciating Gratitude
I have a paying job where I help people solve their technical problems several times a day. Most of the people I work with are kind, fun, and fairly appreciative of what I do for them. Nobody in our office wants to work with the people who are demanding, rude, and take us for granted. While I don’t like to leave people hanging, I have found that I can frequently consider an issue closed when I don’t hear from the people I’m helping, since it’s very rare that people will call me to tell me that everything is great.
When I served on staff in churches, the work was often hard, the hours long, and there were times that the job was a real challenge. Sometimes, it seemed like there were whole groups of people who had nothing better to do than find ways to make my life harder, and they were really good at it. Anyhow, in the midst of all that, I kept a special file folder, where I put every piece of nice mail; every “out of season” card that wished me well; copies of every nice, unsolicited email; and every other piece of spontaneous ad unexpected gratitude and encouragement I ever received. It kept me going during the toughest times in ministry, so I carried it from church to church for almost two decades.
There seem to be a lot of people out there these days who are giving up on faith. For some, they have been hurt by other “believers” who have used God to justify any manner of behavior that would make Jesus weep with shame, and they have had enough of religion. For others they are products of an environment where faith is devalued, not encouraged, or generally not “helpful.” Still others, give up because they had some unmet expectation of something that God would do for them. “if there is a God, why did _________ happen/not happen?”
Somehow, in our efforts to live our lives and do all the things that we do, we often forget the simple fact that our world depends on gratitude. The lives of everyone who we encounter, as well as our own lives, can become dull and empty without it. More than a “social lubricant” that helps us get along with each other, gratitude is an absolute necessity that makes our entire world work. There are countless people in your life who have done many things for you that were never noticed and/or appreciated. I think that the term for this is “being taken for granted.” We’ve already passed through a season of thanksgiving, and now we’re celebrating the coming of nothing less than a light for an otherwise dark world. We’re all caught up in things like celebrating things the “right” way; attending the “right” events; giving or receiving the “right” gifts; or spending time with the “right” people.
Are we also caught up in an attitude that shows appreciation for what we are given in this season?
The Battle for Christmas
I am a Christian. And it’s Christmas time. So this time of year, my faith tradition is manifested in Advent candles, Christmas carols, and nativity scenes. While December the 25th is not necessarily the historical date of birth of the historical person named Jesus, this is the season of the year when we celebrate the coming of the incarnation of God into the world. It’s a time of year to celebrate that God became one of us.
Of course, this is also the 21st century in America. So Christmas also means long lines at the mall, huge Christmas trees covered in red and green and exorbitant amounts of glitter, and long parades during which we get to enjoy floats, bands, and lots and lots of Santas. Whether you’re sitting in the pew of your church on Christmas Eve holding a candle, or sitting in the CEO’s office of a major retail chain watching your profits skyrocket, this is definitely the most wonderful time of the year.
Being such an important and hectic time of year for so many people, it’s no wonder that arguments between secular and religious Americans have pretty much become par for the course whenever Christmas rolls around. This time, the argument is being exemplified by a pair of billboards on either side of the Lincoln Tunnel between New York and New Jersey. On the New Jersey side, American Atheists has purchased a billboard featuring a nativity scene image with the words: “You know it’s a myth. This season, celebrate reason!” On the New York side, the Catholic league has responded with a board reading, “You know it’s real. This season, celebrate Jesus.” And so another Christmas season’s worth of religious wars begin.
When I first saw this story on CNN, I was only vaguely interested as a student of religion and a practitioner of one of the traditions in question. But the more I read and saw, the more I was intrigued, and somewhat disturbed, by what I saw happening. As Jeanne Moos interviewed the leaders of both organizations, all these two men really managed to do, in my opinion, was demonstrate how little each of these warring traditions understands about the other.
David Silverman, the president of American Atheists, insisted that we all know “the magic man in the sky” is a myth. This demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of not just the Christian understanding, but all Abrahamic understandings of who God is. He’s absolutely correct; God is not magic, God is not a man, God is not in the sky. He’s creating a straw man in place of addressing the things that Christians actually believe. Of course, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, isn’t doing much better. After explaining that the billboard was a necessary Christian response to avoid being a “doormat,” he starts returning the favor by attacking atheist beliefs with the same straw man strategy that Silverman uses, saying that they believe in either the Big Bang theory or the “King Kong Theory,” as he chooses to describe evolution, and calling them both fairytales. The moment in this interview when my jaw actually dropped, however, was when Donohue said of atheists, “They believe in nothing, they stand for nothing, they think they come from nothing.” If there’s anything I’ve learned as a religious studies major, it’s that there is no such thing as a person who actually believes in and stands for nothing. Just because their beliefs don’t exactly parallel our own, don’t involve worship of an ethereal other or a transcendent spirit, doesn’t mean their beliefs do not exist.
The core of this problem, however, is the claims that both billboards make. Both signs begin with the phrase “You know.” I am completely confident of what I believe as a Christian, but I would not necessarily define that as “knowing” anything. We, as Christians, have faith in the existence of God, the birth of Christ, and the guidance of the Spirit, but it wouldn’t be a very impressive show of faith if we had true “knowledge” of God. “We live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), don’t we? Christians aren’t claiming to fully know anything about our Creator or our Savior; our choice is to believe in something greater than ourselves. The choice of atheists is to believe in themselves, and their own abilities to understand the world around them, including the belief that there is not a force behind what we see, at least not one we can understand.
Until each of these groups come to a point where they can understand where the other is coming from, until we can stop throwing misguided insults and false claims at each other and have an actual discussion, the debate will continue to be relegated to petty billboards placed in the most commercially strategic places possible. And for me, that simply will not do. No one gains anything but a tarnished reputation by yelling at one another, and neither side is being reflected well in the current situation; progress in our claimed nation of toleration will only happen if we strive for something more than who can win the most converts.
The Ballad of John… and John (Ode to John Lennon)
Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon. FaithLab’s Bert Montgomery muses about the message of John Lennon, and also thinks a bit about another “John.”
The following is an reading of “The Ballad of John and … John (Ode to John Lennon)” from Elvis, Willie, Jesus & Me: The Musings and Mutterings of a Church Misfit (2009, Smyth & Helwys).
Click “read more” to listen to the audio reading.
Used by permission from Smyth & Helwys Publishing, Inc.
Advent in Whoville
Dietrich Bonhoeffer is well known for writing about “religionless Christianity.” It wasn’t that he was walking away from the faith, of course. He only wanted to jettison trappings that did nothing to help people live as citizens of God’s Kingdom, the kind of distracted and dangerous belief that allowed churches to remain open and unmoved while moral atrocities occurred on their doorsteps. In his estimation, a pared-down “religionless” faith required two essentials–prayer and works of righteousness.
This Advent, with my family living in two different states, most of our Advent and Christmas trappings are having a sabbatical year. The tree’s staying in the garage and the ornaments in boxes. I have only limited access to the music I always look forward to, from The Messiah to John Denver and the Muppets. Even the beautiful copper Advent candle stand that my brother made us remains packed away. Though I don’t feel qualified to bring anything to a discussion of religionless Chrisitanity, my circumstances have led me to contemplate the possibility of a sentiment-free Advent and Christmas.
My feelings are mixed as I imagine a year without the three Baby’s 1st Christmas ornaments, various wreath and reindeer ornaments made by little hands, and the original Starship Enterprise ornament, which I received as a seminary graduation present and always hangs in a place of honor easily visible from my favorite reading chair. I’m like the Whos down in Whoville after the Grinch stole everything, including their roast beast. I’m a little bewildered as I look around for the artifacts that have always seemed synonymous with the season. But, like the Whos, I know lack of stuff can’t keep Christmas from coming. Advent has arrived right on schedule and Christmas will, too.
I wonder, though, what a pared-down Advent should look like. If there are no Advent candles or calendars, what must there be in order for the season to leave its mark? When I was in marching band at Baylor, we would always do a pre-game show before home football games. We had to be ready to go as soon as the prayer was said over the loudspeaker. Our instructions were to stay alert. We weren’t to bow our heads. We never knew how long the prayer might last. So we’d stand at attention and whisper to each other: “Pray, pray, pray. Watch, watch, watch.” At the amen we moved into action.
Those whispered reminders strike me as a pretty good motto for Advent: “Pray, pray, pray. Watch, watch, watch.” And while you’re at it, commit a few acts of righteousness.
Be Still
Well, here we are. The time of Orthodox Advent, Traditional Advent, Ashura, Hanakkuh, Kwanzaa, Christmas and the like. It is wrapped for us in glitz, busyness, and noise. Just thinking about it can make one tired, right?
In the hullabaloo that has become this “holiday” time of year, it seems appropriate to consider again a passage recently offered in the Revised Common Lectionary. In Psalm 46, the Psalmist addresses the time in which we are suspended: between God’s revealing himself at Creation and the time when all is set aright and made complete. We live in a time when the seas roar and nations war one with the other.
Eugene Peterson’s interpretation of this well known Psalm tells us to stop what we are doing and, “Step out of the traffic! Take a long, loving look at me, your High God, above politics, above everything.”
Stop? Be still? Take a long, loving look? Who has time for that?? That is so counter-holiday-cultural and weird. It’s so … unproductive…so…uncomfortable for some of us!
In Advent, Christians embrace the time between Emmanuel’s birth and the time when Christ will be “all in all” at the completion of God’s work begun at creation. We recognize again that we live in a time of spiritual waiting. In this time of waiting, we are faced with turmoil within our personal lives and conflict visible all around us. We can feel lost. We can feel consumed. We can easily lose our focus. If we are truthful with ourselves, we can have doubts, asking “Who is God? Is God there? Do I really believe?” (We are in good company with the doubts. Remember the Apostle Paul? John of the Cross’s “dark night of the soul?” Martin Luther? Mother Teresa?)
Taking to heart the words of the Psalmist, however, we need to take the time to be still and know God in order for everything else to be in focus. We can emerge from the stillness with clarity, with renewed strength, knowing God and thus, God’s peace.
The stillness we are to employ is not borne out of boredom or obligation, however. It is rather an engaged stillness, a purposeful stillness. In her book “The Religious Potential of the Child” Dr. Sofia Cavalletti notes that the kind of silence necessary is an interior silence, an intentional settling of oneself, and it is accompanied by listening. (p.136). Cavalletti goes on to say that listening in the silence is “a leaning towards…” and is “the opening of ourselves in a receptive attitude towards” God.
Amid mounting holiday tensions, final exams, traveling, speculating on bowl games, wiki-leaks, unrest overseas, financial difficulties and the weight of the many lists before us, let us heed once more the words of the Psalmist during this Advent season. May we listen in intentional stillness, leaning in towards God a bit and away from the world for a while. Let us breathe in God’s presence with us. Perhaps then, we will know that God is exalted –God is above politics, and above everything, and we, like the Psalmist, will emerge from that stillness with God with clarity, renewed strength, and peace for the days ahead.
Pushing the Envelope
I have a pen pal who lives about seven miles away as the crow flies and about eleven as the crow drives a car around the hills and curves of our metro area. Given as how I tend to write quite, it’s a bit strange for me to have a pen pal, but there he is, a quick fifteen minute or so drive fro my home, and we’ve never met. We’ve published a number of his things here at Faithlab, but it’s mostly because he is a very good writer, who happens to have some compelling stories to tell. The other part of it is that he’s doing a very compelling ministry with people at the margins of society, and such stories deserve telling loudly and often.
I remember how, when I was serving local churches, I was always trying to find ways to help people push the envelope in finding new ways to participate in ministries that were outside their comfort zones. Obviously, that didn’t go over very well. Some local church folk don’t like to be encouraged to meet face to face with homeless people; to open their doors to people who are not welcome elsewhere; to encourage urban poor to farm on their property; or even to tolerate an adult with Aspergers’ who doesn’t always react perfectly at every social situation.
There are some limits to how far we are able to go in ministry, no matter how good our intentions, and we need people who are willing to push the envelopes that we are afraid to approach. I think that’s part of the idea that has shaped our concept of missions for a very long time. For many of us, missions are an adventure, and adventure, as it has been said, is someone else having a very hard time far away from where you are.
With that in mind, I remain fascinated by my pen pal’s ministry. His is a difficult struggle with difficult people, and it seems like he gets nowhere near the recognition or gratitude that he deserves for such work. Of course, he’s not the kind of person who seeks such things from ministry, but I’m pretty sure that he could use all the support he can get. I have ambitions of taking him out to lunch and talking about things, but I probably need to dream a bit bigger on that point.
Why am I telling you all this? I have long believed that people of faith have a “mission” to affect the world around them. It’s all well and good to send money or representatives to far-off lands in hopes that they can make a difference in the lives of the people to whom we’ve sent them, but it’s also very easy to forget, sometimes willfully, that people very close to us need our ministry as well. Yes, it it might creep us out a bit, and it’s sometimes hard to get people to interact with the kinds of people in your community that they basically try to avoid, but that’s what real “missions” is supposed to be: becoming the presence of God to people who need to sense that presence in their lives. It’s not something that we’re supposed to ship off somewhere else, so much as something that we’re supposed to embody wherever we are. Whether you know about them or not, there are people very near you who need the kind of ministry that you probably cannot do in the “normal” run of church life. They need you as a person more than an institution, so opportunities are always there.
More than that, we need to understand that thanks are something that we need to give rather than receive. I think that the best way to give the gratitude that we should is to take on thankless actions and under-appreciated ministries, and let the thanks that we don’t get serve as the balance for the thanks that we can never sufficiently give.
Of course, that’s all my opinion. How about being my new pen pal for a few minutes and sharing yours?
A Lesson from the Muse of Advent
They said it was so. I didn’t believe them. What did they know? They were old.
I’ve become one of them and now I know they knew what I did not. What I now wonder is: Did what they know make any difference or did they just keep on doing what they were doing in the manner they had always done it? There is a bigger question. Now that I have become one of them and now know that what they knew was true will it make any difference in what I do or the manner in which I do it?
Life is short and time moves swiftly. That is what they knew and I now know. It wasn’t always so. Once upon a time, a zillion years or so ago in a magical land called childhood, life was forever and time stood still.
Life wasn’t forever, which I should have figured out—great grandparents died and pets were buried; but the great grandparents were very old and the pets met with misfortune (a neighbor with a short fuse and a fast trigger). For the most part, time stretched out beyond the horizon. There was no end in sight.
What I didn’t understand was that the horizon was curved and that time’s line didn’t just keep on going forever. I know now. Time has circled and kicked me in the butt. It’s threatening to pass me. What happens when it does?
I don’t know, and I’m not too much bothered by the unknown. Along with the recognition that life is short and time moves swiftly, age has brought something else . . . an appreciation of the present. It is all I have, all I’ve ever had. My sin regarding time is not that I failed at an earlier age to understand its fleeting nature. My sin is that I spent too much of each present striving for the future.
The world’s gone crazy . . . or maybe it has always been crazy. What else explains throwing away life in Eden for the taste of one forbidden fruit? The craziness begs me to bring sanity; and for much of my life, I’ve sought to do that—ever striving to find a way to make tomorrow a better, saner place. As I look around today, it appears I’ve not been all that successful. Crazy still seems to reign. Young people who don’t know better live as if they have all the time in the world; and old people who do know better sigh at what they know and do again what they’ve done before. Oh, my . . . .
Wait! From somewhere amidst the craziness a voice is heard. Awake! Awake! Salvation is nearer than you think. The night is far spent. The dawn nears. Awake! It is the call of the muse of Advent, bidding us see our lives and our world from a different perspective.
The muse of Advent dares us to believe that time is saved only by living it and that the future is secured and redeemed only in the present. Awake! Live! Life is a gift from God and it is yours. Live it. The rest belongs to God. Leave it.
Can this be true? It must be for once upon a time, a time present in history, a child was born and came to live among us. They say he was the Son of God. What say we?
Follow Us!