Tuesday, November 30, 2021
We Are the Ones
Who Shine
With Christ’s Light
As Snow Sparkles Between the Shadows
Psalm 31:16
Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love.
Luke 12:25
Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?
Words of Grace For Today
On the coin of money is inscribed ‘In God We Trust.’
This is one of the more blatant and dreadful ironies of our lives: the world seeks coin to enable the collection of resources (through payment with the coin) and to ensure the bidding of the holder is done by others (through payment with the coin).
Those of us who cannot or do not have enough coin, worry about our futures: can we keep at bay the despair of hunger, the life-ending extremes of the environment, the decay of life without good medical care, or the loss of sanity as we are isolated (as an easy target for our enemies and separated from the social fabric of life.)
This worry motivates us to work, and to work hard, to ensure some kind of safety in our future, some kind of food supply in our days to come, some kind of health care so that what ails us can be discovered, diagnosed and treated, some healthy connection with other humans who do not wish us harm. Our worry itself does nothing. It adds not even a minute to the span of our lives. What we do to work through our worry may or may not succeed in providing life and life abundant for us.
Life in all its great goodness that God created us to enjoy does not require any of this that we can work for, though. Life abundant requires only one thing and that is God’s steadfast love.
God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying.
God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves.
God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves to working to be God’s love for others.
God’s steadfast love moves us from worrying about ourselves and on to knowing that we are marked with the cross of Christ, which does not just mark us like coins with the greatest irony of all times. The mark on us changes us from the root of our being to the last days we live in God’s good creation: we become God-made saints.
When our enemies or our shortcomings or the lack of things we require to stay alive threaten our future we can pray: Let your face shine upon your servants; save us in your steadfast love.
Like the sun rising for a new day, sparkling, dazzling in a field of snow, God renews Christ’s light in us, and we shine, and we sparkle, and we transform the world from misery to happiness, from despair to joy, from hunger to nourished … from lost to found.