Today’s Readings: Psalm 54; Genesis 50:15-26; Luke 9:18-27; Romans 9:6-13; Psalm 68
I was a child during the late 1970’s, so I don’t remember exactly what those times felt like (at least from an adult’s perspective). As a student of history and pop culture, however, I vaguely remember hearing about something called the Misery Index. As I remember, the index charted the general discontentment with the circumstances of the time: high gas prices, soaring inflation, increased unemployment – and the list went on. Thirty years later, it would seem, we are pretty much in the same circumstances: soaring gas prices, increased cost of living, and a home-foreclosure crisis. The only difference is that now we’ve added things like an awareness of global climate change and record budget deficits to the mix. Just thinking about things today makes me want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head. Having few personal recollections of what it was like to live through the earlier period in the 1970’s, it’s been interesting for me to live through this period of misery. What strikes me is how completely overwhelming the sense of challenge is – how easy it is to begin wondering if we’ll ever be able to turn things around! Thankfully, we have words like those from the psalmist from today’s second Psalm to remind us that it is not our sense of misery that should define our lives but something else. In pointing toward the most important way of perceiving reality, the psalmist said: “When the righteous see God in action they’ll laugh, they’ll sing, they’ll laugh and sing for joy. Sing hymns to God all heaven, sing out; clear the way for the coming of the Cloud-Rider. Enjoy God, cheer when you see him!” (Psalm 3-4 – The Message). That all sounds well and good, but how do we get ourselves to the point of being able to laugh and sing for joy during these challenging times? The psalmist tells us: we LOOK for God in action. The psalmist reminded me of an old adage I frequently use: “A person usually finds what he/she is looking for.” My question for you to consider today is this: “What are you looking for?” Are you looking for reasons to feed your sense of misery so that it can take over your life, or are you looking for signs of God’s presence and activity all around you – a sense of presence and activity that would help you do the unthinkable in these most difficult times: laugh and sing for joy! There may be many indicators around you that would suggest it’s easier to find reasons for a sense of malaise; luckily, there are ten times the indicators around you that would point toward God’s presence and activity. All you have to do is look for those indicators. May you spend some time today doing just that: looking for indicators of God’s presence and activity in your life. Til next time…
I was a child during the late 1970’s, so I don’t remember exactly what those times felt like (at least from an adult’s perspective). As a student of history and pop culture, however, I vaguely remember hearing about something called the Misery Index. As I remember, the index charted the general discontentment with the circumstances of the time: high gas prices, soaring inflation, increased unemployment – and the list went on. Thirty years later, it would seem, we are pretty much in the same circumstances: soaring gas prices, increased cost of living, and a home-foreclosure crisis. The only difference is that now we’ve added things like an awareness of global climate change and record budget deficits to the mix. Just thinking about things today makes me want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head. Having few personal recollections of what it was like to live through the earlier period in the 1970’s, it’s been interesting for me to live through this period of misery. What strikes me is how completely overwhelming the sense of challenge is – how easy it is to begin wondering if we’ll ever be able to turn things around! Thankfully, we have words like those from the psalmist from today’s second Psalm to remind us that it is not our sense of misery that should define our lives but something else. In pointing toward the most important way of perceiving reality, the psalmist said: “When the righteous see God in action they’ll laugh, they’ll sing, they’ll laugh and sing for joy. Sing hymns to God all heaven, sing out; clear the way for the coming of the Cloud-Rider. Enjoy God, cheer when you see him!” (Psalm 3-4 – The Message). That all sounds well and good, but how do we get ourselves to the point of being able to laugh and sing for joy during these challenging times? The psalmist tells us: we LOOK for God in action. The psalmist reminded me of an old adage I frequently use: “A person usually finds what he/she is looking for.” My question for you to consider today is this: “What are you looking for?” Are you looking for reasons to feed your sense of misery so that it can take over your life, or are you looking for signs of God’s presence and activity all around you – a sense of presence and activity that would help you do the unthinkable in these most difficult times: laugh and sing for joy! There may be many indicators around you that would suggest it’s easier to find reasons for a sense of malaise; luckily, there are ten times the indicators around you that would point toward God’s presence and activity. All you have to do is look for those indicators. May you spend some time today doing just that: looking for indicators of God’s presence and activity in your life. Til next time…
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