EMBRACING THE COMMA

Punctuation marks are important for coherent and cohesive written communication. That is why I have always been in a sort of awe ever since I learned back in scripture class in seminary that the Greek New Testament was written without any punctuation whatsoever. How did the scholars know where one sentence ended and another began? Should a comma or a question mark be inserted? Maybe they had no problems. Good for them.

Sometimes I think my life is like the Greek New Testament: no punctuation. It is one long sentence. Then I have to then figure out where the commas are for me to slow down and where the periods should be inserted for me to stop what I am doing and take a break. But there are times when commas are hard to come by, let alone periods. Life forces us to keep going when a comma would work very well, thank you. But no comma is to be had. Those are truly the times when we need to stop, take a breath, insert a comma, and then, if you will, embrace it.

Those commas come in many shapes and forms. They are as simple as getting up from

the desk and grabbing a cup of coffee to taking a day off just to relax and maybe do

absolutely nothing at all. Granted, for some of us, doing nothing at all is worse than not

even stopping for a cup of Joe.

The sad reality is that often the quick commas are all we sometimes get given that our life

seems to be so much out of our hands. We’re part of a team or a process that must keep

going. And it is often only when someone yells “Time Out!” that we take time out and

take a breath. And often that is all we need. It may not seem like much and if sometimes

is not, but it is enough. That is good.

I was reflecting on this in the middle of a five-hour flight from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles.

We were taking a week off scheduled months ago to visit the Nixon and Reagan Libraries

among other sights along the coast. We’ve been taking bus trips the past few years

visiting the presidential homes and libraries on the east coast and will visit the ones in

Ohio in June.

In many ways that was not a good time for us to be away. We had decided to downsize as

the yard work and the landscaping were beginning to be overwhelming. With that in

mind we contacted a young couple whose older daughter I had baptized and whom we

knew needed to upsize to see if they might be interested in our home. They came to look,

asked our price and bought the home. In a sense, on the way to California we were

homeless. Such is life!

We were away when we should have been out looking for our new home. No comma

here. Not even a period. We are into a new paragraph in our lives!