Get up and get dressed.
Always good wisdom, this from Anu Garg's blog A.Word.A.Day earlier this week, made me pause, full stop, and let mind wander
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book. -Carson McCullers, writer (19 Feb 1917-1967)
I will add. Or an old diary. Or a photograph of a teenage girl and boy standing close together dressed in clothes people haven't worn in nearly a century - - found tucked away in a box she left behind and never meant for anyone to see.
Or an old man's schoolbook with a girl's name written all through from front to back -- in the margins his initials and hers united by tiny plus signs and hearts drawn.
I always wondered what happened with those two.
A family photograph from half a century ago: Papa! Who are these people? That's my mama, do you remember her? And OMG, that's me, have I changed THAT much?
My mother died when I was 75 years old. My father's, whom we called Mom, died when he was 36. I was there that afternoon, watching him pace the floor as one of his sisters made station-to-station long distance phone calls. If I had lost my mother when I was 36 I'd have been devastated, I wonder how he felt? Don't recall he ever showed loving emotion around or toward us. Well, ...
Thinking this morning of folks who are working to get past something or grieving to get through something, a loss, a sadness. Some permanent change in life that cannot be undone. Worst perhaps, something that now will forever end in "if only ...". I reckon we all have those. My first child, my oldest daughter, My Daughter the Nurse: if only she hadn't smoked, if only I had put my foot down when I found out and she was nineteen, instead of silent resignation? But then a nineteen year old knows everything and a forty-something knows nothing.
From a lifetime of smoking, the neurosurgeon said, came the brain aneurysms and the blind right eye, and the stroke with its multiple effects. Spends day and night in her room, in bed, watching Gunsmoke and wondering if she'll get better.
Here's the deal with problems in life - - and with praying that they'll go away. They won't. The answer to prayer is the lightbulb: the dawning realization that you have to take the initiative yourself. Get up and do things, something, most anything. Live.
Injured, damaged, grieving, or hurt, and can't face getting up, getting dressed and starting your day? Creation is finished, God looked and said it's Very Good, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again, but not bodily in your lifetime, and no healing comes because God reaches or calls down from Heaven and makes everything the way it used to be. God works through us, "He has no hands but our hands ...", remember? You'll never get better until you press your own starter button. Get up, wash your face, comb your hair, get dressed, get out and do something, even simply a walk, a regular walk while thanking God for all good gifts around us.
Life is yours and yours alone, do not wait for God to act in your place. It's still Epiphany Season: God's saving act is in your dawning realization. After that, it's up to you.
