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| Queen Anne's Lace |
and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength,
yet my reward is with the LORD,
my recompense is with my God.
Six months ago and six months from now we will celebrate the nativity of Jesus Christ. Because the Angel Gabriel told Mary her kinswoman Elizabeth was in her sixth month, it is fitting to celebrate the nativity of John the Baptist today. Jesus heaped the highest praise on his cousin when he declared,
Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist....I wonder if every generation, or every American generation, believes it should and must "make a difference." The world will be a better place for my having been here.
Some will set out for school only because they have to; and others because they intend to make a pile of money; but many want to make a difference. They hope their work will be more than a job or career; it will be a profession whereby they improve the life of others. Hopefully their religion will strengthen that conviction as they see how important their work is. Even when their careers stop careering and they seem to have reached their own personal level of incompetence, they will believe the Lord has placed them there to do the best they can.
(I am happy to say I reached my own L-of-Inc several years ago and have happily ceded that place to an abler friar.)
We must wonder how John the Baptist coped with his predicament as he lay in the darkness of Herod's dungeon waiting for he-knew-now-what. I would suppose he felt that he had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength....
He would not be the last Christian to think such thoughts. Paul of Tarsus landed in the clink many times as he preached Jesus Christ Crucified in one Jewish ghetto after another. Sometimes his own fellow Christians plotted against him!
But, in the Spirit of Jesus who had also pored over these texts from Isaiah and suffered his own catastrophe, we trust the Judge of All to show mercy to us, and we let the Spirit work out the problems.
Who can say what is failure or success in the long run? Some debacles prove to be "the best thing that ever happen to me" and some victories are revealed as pyrrhic. I suspect God doesn't know the meaning of the words success and failure.
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| Sun-bent daisies |
...yet my reward is with the LORD,When I have utterly forgotten the meaning of success and failure, perhaps I will have learned the lesson of faith.
my recompense is with my God.
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I love to write. This blog helps me to meditate on the Word of God, and I hope to make some contribution to our contemplations of God's Mighty Works.
Ordinarily, I write these reflections two or three weeks in advance of their publication. I do not intend to comment on current events.
I understand many people prefer gender-neutral references to "God." I don't disagree with them but find that language impersonal, unappealing and tasteless. When I refer to "God" I think of the One whom Jesus called "Abba" and "Father", and I would not attempt to improve on Jesus' language.
You're welcome to add a thought or raise a question.