A Hand on Life

"The Light Shines in the Darkness

and the Darkness has Never Overcome it"

John 1

The sun was shining brightly--and it was a very dark day for the man who came into the vet clinic carrying a small bundle in a blanket.  Tears were in his eyes.  He vanished into one of the back rooms and then emerged without the blanket.  This could not be good.  But he stopped to pat an enormous, handsome Golden Retriever named "Barley"--9 months an 98 lbs.  The man stopped, patted and smiled through tears. The tail wagged endlessly, and we all know that dogs can smile, don't we?  

During my appointment, I learned that the man awakened to find his dog had died in the night. She was elderly, had been treated for many old age problems, which of course relieved none of the shock and pain of loss.  Except for Barley that is.  What is there in the darkest of days that reaches out to us with the light of life that can never be put out in us?  Through death--life reached out and that man took hold.  

These days of Advent go deeper and deeper into the darkness toward the shortest day of the Solstice. Christians take that day and recreate it with the birth of God's Son and the coming of Light.  "I am the Light of the world," he proclaimed, without saying--I give light, but "I AM the LIGHT."   It is truly one of those mysterious ways that our extremity in grief becomes God's opportunity to shine that Light into our lives.  Or maybe it takes dark days to open our eyes to Light uncreated. 

The Day of Infamy

"The Day that shall live in Infamy" 


"Gracious God, we commend to your care and keeping the brave men and women of the Pacific Fleet who paid the ultimate price for our nation on Pearl Harbor Day. Turn the pain of infamy into the hope of peace.  Beat our swords into ploughshares and transform our warring madness into your Kingdom.             AMEN+" 

We cannot live into this day without this shocking image of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. On that day, would those who staggered in shock foresee the memorial that would one day enshrine the loss?  Perhaps it is a mark of national pride, but well earned, that the monument has a sway back in the middle. It is supposed to represent the height of national pride before the attack, the depth of depression after it, and then the new height after the war.  Some critics only saw it as a crushed soda can. 

^{Then still, many others find their hope in this enduring prophecy from Isaiah 11:}  

⁶ The wolf shall live with the lamb,
   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
   and a little child shall lead them.
⁷ The cow and the bear shall graze,
   their young shall lie down together;
   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸ The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹ They will not hurt or destroy
   on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   as the waters cover the sea.

Others follow the deeper prophecy of enduring hope from Isaiah:

Soul Searching

Captions I Could Not Resist!

"No Rudolph!  I said the Schmidt House---not the..........House!"  

or how about just one word....

R-E-C-A-L-C-U-L-A-T-I-N-G!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here's a twist on this image--how do we find our direction, make our way in the world? Or even more bluntly--where is the GPS for the soul?  

it may just be me.  Do you think that the more we rely on our external technology, the less we know about the inner world of who we really are?  I like the tech stuff as much as anyone.  But, I notice that the more I talk with people, the more I hear a fixation on the outer world and a sense of loss about what Teresa of Avila calls "the interior castle"--or Good Pope John 23rd, "the journal of a soul."  Do we know our soul well enough to enter it as the castle it is--or to write its journey? 

Several times now, I used this familiar logo as a good play on words we need for ourselves.  

It's the familiar--"LOOK INSIDE."  Amazon gives us the click-on so we can look at the book's contents.  By doing that, they hope to sell more books because we see what we want.  Now ask yourself--where is the click-on to peer into your own soul?  In this "Journal," Pope John knows himself well enough to chronicle the journey of his soul.  It is utterly amazing how you come away with this awe of how well he knows who he is and the sense of God's presence within.  

So where is the GPS for the soul?  You can follow the journey of others and hear and see glimpses of yourself.  Or as you will discover with books like this one, start writing your own journal.  God inside.  Paint the picture of your interior castle--dare to get an inkling of your soul. 

Wave Waiting

Waiting for the Wave!  

I cannot tell you how many pictures I take just to be able to get the right roll of the wave.  You got to wait on them, time them just right, and then down to the millisecond--press that button to capture it. There's a wave of anticipation and excitment when you get it just right.  Now look at the picture below.  After years of waiting on the splash, I have grown to love that curl with its deep aquamarine color just before it hits the reef.  Take a look below and see the difference.

Then of course--forget the camera, grab the surf board and wait for the wave and the ride of your life.  Does the time ever come when you catch the wave and can be fully satisfied?  What sends us back out looking one more time for just one more wave?

Now, hold on...here's a real wave to ride.  Think of the Holy Spirit that moved over the waters at the beginning of time and called forth creation.  What would it be like to wait on the Spirit, to let it fill the soul, and allow you to soar to great heights. Heck--walking on water is nothing compared to that.

The Pentecost Wave

Acts 2

14 But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them: ‘Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
¹⁷ “In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
   and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
   and your old men shall dream dreams.

Keeping Christmas

Can You Keep Christmas?  

There are still 2 days of Christmas left!  Van Dyke gives the best farewell lines into the New Year.

Henry van Dyke (1852-1933)

Van Dyke was an American writer, Presbyterian minister, professor, diplomat and a well-known expert on fly-fishing. He taught literature at Princeton University and in 1912 was elected president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. President Wilson appointed him U.S. minister to the Netherlands and Luxembourg.



For all van Dyke did, strange that he is remembered for this famous, enduring quotation.

---

There is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and that is, keeping Christmas.
Are you willing...

·         to forget what you have done for other people, and to remember what other people have done for you;

·         to ignore what the world owes you, and to think what you owe the world;

·         to put your rights in the background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to do a little more than your duty in the foreground;

·         to see that men and women are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their faces to their hearts, hungry for joy;

·         to own up to the fact that probably the only good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of life, but what you are going to give to life;

·         to close your book of complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness.

Are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing...

·         to stoop down and consider the needs and desires of little children;

·         to remember the weakness and loneliness of people growing old;

·         to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask yourself whether you love them enough;

·         to bear in mind the things that other people have to bear in their hearts;

·         to try to understand what those who live in the same home with you really want, without waiting for them to tell you;

·         to trim your lamp so that it will give more light and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall behind you;

·         to make a grave for your ugly thoughts, and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate open—

Are you willing to do these things, even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.

Are you willing...

·         to believe that love is the strongest thing in the world—

·         stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death—

·         and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love?

Then you can keep Christmas.
And if you can keep it for a day, why not always?

Advent Days of Gratitude

 

Never Too Soon for....

It's A Wonderful Life! 

I know, I know--too early in December to bring up It's a Wonderful Life.  Yet I have to wonder if before Christmas rushes us to fast--we now have the chance to stop and remember how our lives have been shaped by others---and--how we shape others lives.  This is the most important part of the movie for me--see what you think!

In the above picture, that's Clarence the Angel (2nd Class) without wings--and his client, George Bailey.  Clarence grants George's wish--"I wish I had never been born!"    So George gets the chance to see the world without him and his influence. When he finds the gravestone of his brother, Harry, he declares:

Clarence: [explaining] Your brother, Harry Bailey, broke through the ice and was drowned at the age of nine.
George Bailey: That's a lie! Harry Bailey went to war! He got the Congressional Medal of Honor! He saved the lives of every man on that transport!
Clarence: Every man on that transport died. Harry wasn't there to save them, because you weren't there to save Harry.

From this point, George discovers the world without him in it--and how wonderful he himself helped to make it.  Gratitude fills George as he recovers his family and his life--which is such a wonderful gift.  

So here is the challenge!  Count the days of Advent with gratitude that you have the life you do, with the people who are a part of it, and that all of you have "gifted" each other in this world.  Then, perhaps the meaning of Christmas will dawn--that because of Jesus Christ, all of our lives are forever changed and charged with meaning, purpose, and gratitude.   
  

¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 
                                                                                    John 1:12-13
                                                                                                                            

Like sands through the hour glass

Like Sand through an Hour Glass
So are the Days of our Lives

Remember that popular soap opera?  The writer's job was to twist as many lives up like a pretzel while they frittered away their time carelessly.  In the end--where did they end up?  Of course, ready for the next scene to do it all over again.

What is time really like for us?  There's a person tonight in some hospital who waits for bypass surgery come the morning. The heart will be stopped, the new channel harvested, and blood will flow though it--the measurement of life.  Another person wonders if tomorrow will be the last day on the job.  Count that time!  Students will go to school all over the nation wondering why they are going to school.  Time marches on with or without us.

Maybe we need to reach out, take the hour glass and turn it over every time we engage in life.  One author puts as if we get a new lease on the flow of time:

'Now' is the operative word. Everything you put in your way is just a method of putting off the hour when you could actually be doing your dream. You don't need endless time and perfect conditions. Do it now. Do it today. Do it for twenty minutes and watch your heart start beating.

                                                                                                                    Sam Ewing
                                                                                            American Author and Humorist

The Church across the world calls this period of time "Advent"--meaning "coming."  Imagine instead of an hour glass--a straight line, representing time marching on fast forward.  That stands of our human time--the chronological.  Now bisect it.  What do you have?  In the right proportion, you have a cross.  That "bisection" of the line is often called "kairos," or God's time when God enters our lives.  That's when God seizes us.  That's when time splits open, our pursuit seems never-ending, and the mystery is that our energy and passion only grows, magnifies, and we feel more strangely alive than ever before.  And what is it that we do.  Same thing as Mary said to the Angel Gabriel.  A simple yes that turns our world on end--the hour glass breaks--and we stand with God in God's time.