Well, it's 57 degrees outside, foggy and misty---utterly damp and ugly, tolerable only because it's warmer than it has been for days, albeit now they're saying a glaze of ice and an inch of snow by daybreak. My sister nearby texts that she's turned on the gas fireplace, fixed a pot of vegetable beef soup, and is sitting back digging into a book. My brother in Florida texts dryly joking that with a couple of freezing-night forecasts ahead, they may just sell their house and move farther south. (Venezuela, I presumed.)
But, you know, and we DO know, (we learned it young) life is not about the weather and such mundane things. Their circumstances and outcomes are mainly incidental pleasantries or irritants. Life is about our relationships with other people. And the effort to maintain them and to improve them is much more monumental than dealing with the weather. Sometimes, that effort is overwhelming---heart-wrenching, even. Sometimes, it's no effort at all---laughter and joy.
Life never runs out of trials and troubles, joys and loves---and never will. Just so, the weather is always here. The on and on and on forever looms, and we simply, "Take hold of the eternal life to which [we] were called when [we] made [our] good confession..." --1 Tim 6:12. Hope you've done that. At 72, I better understand how inconsequential the various disquieting matters of this world and life actually are. Time can do that for one.
I love one relational remark attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr., "Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." We may, of course, strive. But, that effort must always be a generous and true effort to help others as well as ourselves amidst the chaos of our particular days and time. Any other warfare is of cursory value and will have only a momentary impact.
Jesus doesn't give us an ongoing option of "moving south." His everyday call to us is to love those around us wherever we are. That is more challenge than most of us can handle anyway. In this failure, to some degree is our earthly existence. Jesus loved purely, consistently and was killed in so doing.
There is an ever-present evil among us. Refuse to call it Satan, if you will. The world is under its frenetic government. Brutal killings, sexual disloyalties, fighting, quarreling, child abuse and trafficking, warfare, bullying, abortion---that list goes on and on and on; its disgusting length and variety are simply overwhelming. Loving within that world opens one to all kinds of heartache. Loving within that world is recognized as a vulnerability. The Un-selfish has no home within a Selfish, evil world.
The Dark Underside truly does exist and does have a recurring, sporadic control of human events. We can choose to live trying to move farther south, but we can never move far enough. We must keep the faith by trying to introduce the Light of Jesus into it. Hence, I faithfully and combatively insist on the truth of the old hymn, "If Heaven's not my home, then, Lord what will I do?"
I love one relational remark attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr., "Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." We may, of course, strive. But, that effort must always be a generous and true effort to help others as well as ourselves amidst the chaos of our particular days and time. Any other warfare is of cursory value and will have only a momentary impact.
Jesus doesn't give us an ongoing option of "moving south." His everyday call to us is to love those around us wherever we are. That is more challenge than most of us can handle anyway. In this failure, to some degree is our earthly existence. Jesus loved purely, consistently and was killed in so doing.
There is an ever-present evil among us. Refuse to call it Satan, if you will. The world is under its frenetic government. Brutal killings, sexual disloyalties, fighting, quarreling, child abuse and trafficking, warfare, bullying, abortion---that list goes on and on and on; its disgusting length and variety are simply overwhelming. Loving within that world opens one to all kinds of heartache. Loving within that world is recognized as a vulnerability. The Un-selfish has no home within a Selfish, evil world.
The Dark Underside truly does exist and does have a recurring, sporadic control of human events. We can choose to live trying to move farther south, but we can never move far enough. We must keep the faith by trying to introduce the Light of Jesus into it. Hence, I faithfully and combatively insist on the truth of the old hymn, "If Heaven's not my home, then, Lord what will I do?"
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