Friday, November 27, 2020
Dead Tree Stick Out
Life Always Come to an End
For Each and All of Us
And if We Think We Can Survive on Our Own
… that’s a fool’s thing
Psalm 38:10
My heart throbs, my strength fails me; as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.
James 1:3
You know that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
Words of Grace For Today
You have heard it said that whatever challenges do not kill you make you stronger.
You have heard it said that testing one’s faith produces endurance.
The first is phooey.
Covid 19 often does not kill the person infected, but there are a number of ‘long haulers’, the people who do not die, and they do not recover. Instead they suffer pain, fatigue and organ complications without end.
Covid 19 is not the only challenge that may not kill you fast, but it will almost make you wish it had.
Testing one’s faith is different. God gives us faith as a gift, and it grows as we face the challenges that life throws at us.
It is different when the challenges of life, more than Covid 19, bring our heart to throb, our strength fails, and the light of our eyes slip away from us.
It’s the beginning of the end of life, threatening our breath, our time, and our hope.
In this time of huge challenge, as life slips on a slippery banana peel on the edge of our graves, we discover exactly what our lives are made of, what our hope provides, and what our faith sustains.
If we think we can somehow go it alone, when our last foot flies into the air and our other foot only has a small grip on that slippery banana peel, it will be quite the surprise …
as God stands, firm on the ground, and catches us, so that our days do not come to a crashing halt.
It is hard to be humble when everything is going so well we can pretend we accomplish life on our own. It is easy to be humble when we can barely breathe, our arms and legs fail to move as we ask they would, and our eyes no longer distinguish between light and dark, colours and black, blessing and curse, and we experience how clearly it is that only by God’s Grace do we live, breath, move and see.
God’s presence with us in the best of times and the worst of times leaves us so humble that there is nothing else in us, but the breath we use to give God thanks. It is good to be so humbled as to give God praise for creating us.