With Thanks
Monday, June 5, 2023
More Sure
Than the North Star
and the Little Dipper,
God Walks With Us
Isaiah 38:19
The living, the living, they thank you, as I do this day; fathers make known to children your faithfulness.
Colossians 2:6-7
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Words of Grace For Today
And on life goes. Not easy. Not like in the past.
Not when we have climate change: wildfires and smoke, storms of vicious power, floods, droughts, and denials that it is anything more than natural evolution as in the distant past.
Life, in the present moment, always has enough challenges to make it seem that life was never this hard, not for us or anyone in the past.
Then we need only remember the difficulty of hauling water, jug by jug, on one’s head, as our ancestors had need to do, until horses, cattle, and donkeys were tamed enough to use as beasts of burden for us. So many other comforts that we take for granted make life so much easier for us than many alive even today. These comforts were beyond any imagination for most humans who ever lived.
So life may not be more difficult.
Yet the truth is comforts and difficulties are not the true measure of life’s difficulties.
Being alone, that is the constant through all of human history and even today which makes every challenge of life extreme, and sometimes impossible. Even hermits and recluses through the ages have found life possible by knowing that God walks with them. While most humans rely on other humans to be with them, to ease the burdens of life, many as they are; hermits who are mystics (and all who take their baptisms seriously) know that the only true companion is God.
Some will say that ‘the blues’, the bottle, or their dog is their only true friend. God though is not limited in anyway. When God walks with us, then come what may, we know how to give thanks. Thanks that overflows, even amidst the most difficult times.
Even today, come what may, we give thanks, and pass on this true assurance of life’s goodness to our children, so that in generations to come, they may face each day, knowing they are not alone.