Tags
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.
The Sophia Center for Spirituality 