God Calling

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calling, God, graciousness, Jonah, mercy, Nineveh, Noah, second chance, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Wisdom School

It has been raining all night. I was awake only twice – and briefly – but my wide-awake housemate affirmed that although some of the rain came more seriously and some was just drip-like, we are in for a full day of it in any case. No storm, I hope, as our Wisdom School ends today and some people have a long way to drive…

I could have expected that the first reading for this morning would serendipitously be about Noah building the ark or some such similar event. Well, not exactly…but it was the story of Jonah and his attempt to get away from God by going in the totally opposite direction from where God had directed him to go. Not only was he found out, but he was determined to be the cause a huge storm and of the eventual deaths of all the people on the ship he had boarded to escape God’s call to Nineveh. Thus, Jonah agreed to have himself thrown overboard, into the angry sea, to save everyone else. Of course, God saved him in the end (Praise God for that large fish!) Good news! Jonah fulfilled his mission of going to Nineveh where, surprisingly, the people repented and returned to God – at least for a hundred years or more.

The moral of this story, we might say, is : if God calls you to something specific you’d better listen and accept the challenge! Or we could look at it as God’s willingness to give us a second chance – in a big way! Commentaries focus on God’s mercy and graciousness…

Whatever aspect of the story catches our fancy, it is surely a great and “fanciful” story for a very rainy day.

Time Passages

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Autumn Equinox, celebrations, dream, families, friends, grace, graciousness, limit, picnics, psalm 90, summer, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time's passing, wisdom's voice

This is the weekend that we call the end of summer even though the calendar says we have some weeks still before the Autumn Equinox. People all over the USA are planning picnics and traffic has been heavy on the highways since Friday as families and friends celebrate the passing of yet another season that, for many, includes some slow down and vacation time. How can this be? In some ways it appears that the children just finished the past school year, and yet some of the events of a month or two ago seem like a faint memory. Time’s passing has a way of confounding us. It’s like that old adage from Henry Van Dyke that time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice…

Psalm 90 says this morning: Time for you is as nothing, Lord, a thousand years of it, your yesterday, passing as a watch of the night. We are your dream; we’re briefly here then simply gone, like grass in the morning green and growing and at sunset withered, dry. Not such an upbeat thought for those of us feeling the press of getting older by the minute. Later in the psalm, however, comes focus on a stance we ought to take, perhaps, going forward today:

So teach us the limit of our days that we may give our hearts to wisdom’s voice. And turn a gracious face toward us for we are here on earth to serve. Each morning let us rise to eat compassion’s bread. And even in the midst of dread, and years of deepest pain, make us glad for these. For there especially you are ever present as the guide. You show us secret splendors through your works and ways. You teach our hands new crafts, new handiwork through these. So may this grace, this graciousness be ours, and rest upon us now and evermore we pray. Amen.