Last year on this day, I looked around and saw all this stuff I had accumulated over the years and wondered why on earth I kept a lot of it. Divesting oneself of items that once had meaning is difficult, to be sure, but slowly – perhaps too slowly – I began doing just that. And looking ahead, I began putting the story of my life together for my family.
But life lived now interrupts even the best of plans. The scrapbook still lies open as I clean out the stuff I know I will never really use. Boxes of notes, photos, and news clippings need to be assessed. Cleaning out the house of a dear friend makes me more determined that my family will not have to do the same for me.
How do we measure our lives? By the good we do for others is the only real answer. We all come to some place where we wonder if we have done enough. There doesn’t seem to be a neat tidy answer tied up with a bow in a box because life isn’t like that.
Prayer for the Day
Eternal Spirit, bring us into your Presence today
As we seek new directions for our lives in today's world;
Hold us fast in your heart, Holy One, so we experience your love,
Broadening our vision of the call you have given us.
Enlarge the boundaries of our thought and imagination,
Confronting us with love's demand for justice and mercy,
As did the One who lived for others,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Sometimes we can’t quite put our finger on something important because we’ve got all of our fingers wrapped around a bunch of other things that are not important.
- Craig D. Lounsbrough, psychologist
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
- Anais Nin, writer (1903-1977)
A voice says, “Cry out!” And I said, “What shall I cry?”
All flesh is like grass, their constancy like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
Surely, all flesh is like grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever.
Isaiah 40: 6-8