...with our hands

Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices,

who wondrous things hath done, in whom His world rejoices;

who, from our mother’s arms, hath blessed us on our way

with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

---Marin Rinkhart, 1636

I wish that I had written the first line of this hymn (well, I might have tweaked the grammar a little, but otherwise…). We are used to, even weary of, talking about giving thanks. We have a holiday reserved for it (well, named for it…the holiday is reserved more and more for eating and Christmas shopping). We debate whether we teach our children well enough to say thank you as they grow up, and whether we continue that courtesy as adults. We spend our table graces and parts of our corporate and private prayers in thanksgiving for our blessings. This is not a novel thought.

The genius part? Thanking God with our hands. Now I get the thanking with our voices, and with our hearts, but with our hands? I like this way of thinking about thanking. What form would thanking with your hands take? Would you ‘pay it forward’? Would you practice random acts of kindness? Would you give more than you thought you could? Would you find yourself going above and beyond, if you thanked with you heart, your hands, your voice?

...I'll be good sometime

 Take my life, lead me, Lord, take my life, led me, Lord,

Make my life useful to Thee.

---R. Maines Rawls, 1968

I was sitting up late one night during a holiday break, when college-age children were ‘home’ for a bit. My cell phone chime startled me out of a thoughtful reverie (ok, Sarah, I was probably asleep in the green chair), and I picked it up to read the following text message: I’ll be good sometime. After my heart stopped racing, I was able to decipher the message; the sender’s predictive texting had interpreted the entered word ‘home’ as the word ‘good’ (same letters on the T9 keypad). And while I’ll be home sometime isn’t terribly specific, it is much more comforting than  I’ll be good sometime.

In this life, most of us can handle being called to ‘goodness’. We can do that, even if it is only ‘sometimes’. But, God knows, brothers and sisters, we are called to more than goodness. We are called to usefulness, to service, to faithfulness to the Savior who poured out his own life for ours.

Friends, we are not called just to be good; we are called to be good for something.

...never, never alone

There’s not a plant or flower below, but makes Thy glories known;

and clouds arise, and tempests blow, by order from Thy throne;

while all that borrows life from Thee is ever in Thy care,

and everywhere that we can be, Thou, God, art present there.

---Isaac Watts, 1715

The signs are all around. They are in the breeze, underfoot. In messages writ large and small, we are reminded that we don’t make our way through this life unaccompanied. Power and tenderness, delicacy and strength, stillness and motion---God’s presence is felt in myriad ways, in every place and time, in ways we desperately seek and in ways discovered as serendipitous gift.

The Psalmist relates it this way:

            Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?

            If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.

            If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

and the light around me become night,’

even the darkness is not dark to you;

the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.

            ---Psalm 139: 7-12

Sisters and brothers, we are never. never. alone. And it is not our job to bind God to us some way.

Erasmus said, ‘Bidden or not bidden, God is present.’ Hear the good news, and rest assured.

,,,the wind changes everything

Wind who makes all winds that blow ---gusts that bend the saplings low,

gales that heave the sea in waves, stirrings in the mind’s deep caves ---

aim your breath with steady power on your church, this day, this hour.

Raise, renew the life we’ve lost, Spirit God of Pentecost.

---Thomas Troeger, 1983

It was one of those days. The kind when you slap bugs crawling up and down your back, and find it’s sweat pouring down your spine. When your gaze across the blacktop of the supermart parking lot is crazed and zagged by waves of rising heat. When the silence is so thick your ears ring with it. When you walk bowlegged, just to keep your thighs from rubbing together where they are chafed, from rubbing together on days just like this. Five days, ten. All of them. It has been this hot, this humid, this still, for. ev. er.

You have work to do. The heat, the stillness won’t stop you, won’t keep you from working with skill, with dedication, with honor. Won’t cause you to throw up your hands, throw in the towel, throw up the white flag of surrender. You believe in the work you do, feel called to it, even. Leaving it undone, or half-done, feels as wrong as planting without mulch to protect from the harsh sun. Beside all that, you are no quitter, are you?

So you keep on.

But, playing with your sweaty curls, ruffling the hem of your red-dusted work shirt, sending pecan leaves trembling is a freshening, a breeze. You raise your eyes to the horizon, edge of disbelieving…but there it is, again. You are still, almost afraid to move for fear the wind will disappear. But you do. And it doesn’t.

And that wind. It renews. It envigorates. It restores the joy to the work you were doing. It colors your shades of grey world, reminds you how good, how life-giving, your labor was. Is.

The wind? It changes everything.