ONE SMALL CANDLE

 The turn of the year is a time both for looking back and reflecting ahead. When we look back at the past, we realize that we could have done things differently, should have, in fact, that mistakes were made but there were a myriad of successes as well. While we may revel in our triumphs and regret our tragedies, we also realize that the past is passed and cannot be undone and that only the future is in our hands.

What that future will be like will only be known when it is past, when it can be viewed from the perspective of the present, just as we now reflect on the past of last year that was our future when that year began. As we reflect back, we wonder if we made a difference in the world, if what we did really mattered. As we look ahead, we ask ourselves the same question: will my life matter? Will I make a difference?

The late scholar Sir James Dowling, who did make a difference in the world in his time, when he was 90 and looked back on his life, came to this conclusion: “When you’re young, you think you’re going to reform the world, that you’re going to make a great impression. When you get old, you realize that, at best, you have only lit one small candle.” You also realize, if you think about it, that one small candle can light a very, very dark room.

We light candles, you and I, by the way we live our lives. They are small candles, to be sure. But without our candle being lit, the world would be darker. To discount our light would be wrong and it would diminish us as a person. No one is unimportant. Everyone has a candle to light. The reason we were born, the reason God created us, was to give light to the world. And as Jesus said, that light of ours is not to be hidden under a bushel basket but to be placed on a stand to give light to those around us. That’s parabolic language to be sure but it is also the truth.

At this time of year we often make resolutions about doing things differently, living life better, making changes in our life that need to be made but won’t come easily. More often than not we bite off more than we can chew and wind up giving up or settling for much less than we could or should. That may be human nature but it is also no excuse. What we often end up doing is nothing: no reflections on the past, no thoughts about what lies ahead, just living from day to day.

What we cannot not do is snuff out the candle. We light the way, whatever that way may be, good or bad, wherever it leads, because doing so comes with the territory of being human. There is no way around it. And even though our light may not be very bright, even though we may be embarrassed because of where it is going and what others saw us doing, we are a candle in the world.

If for this year we resolve to do nothing else, perhaps what we can do, perhaps what we should do, is simply, each morning of each day, remind ourselves that we are a candle, one small candle, yes, but one candle that God has put on this earth to light the way for others. We won’t make a great impression but we will make a difference

THE WORD WE HEARD

I sit and think and wonder why                                             

God’s first sound was a baby’s cry.

He spoke before to those who heard

what sounded like the spoken word --

Adam, Noah, and Abraham,

even Jacob while on the lam --

all heard him speak, or so they said,

and all obeyed in fear and dread.

 

Well, maybe not or maybe so

truth or legend, you never know:

we often hear what sounds like words

when all it is are chirps of birds.

We say we heard God speak to us;

then we wonder what’s all the fuss

from those who heard nary a sound

not even steps upon the ground.

 

God has spoken, yes, this I know;

it all began not long ago

when Jesus Christ was born that day

to come and take my sins away.

From that day on in words and deeds

with picture words -- like mustard seeds --

he told us all about himself

and showed us all about ourselves.

 

He lived; he loved; he laughed; he cried.

He gave his all until he died.

It all began that quiet day

amid the smell of old wet hay

when in that cry -- a baby’s word --

t’was God’s own voice, was what we heard.

We heard him say to you and me,

“I love you all. Why can’t you see

that I was born so you could know

how much your God loves all you so?”

 

The message of this Christmas Day

is how God speaks in his own way.

So let us pause and say a word

of thanks to God,  the Son, Our Lord.

“We thank you, God, for your dear Son

who came to us that cold dark morn.”

We hear him now and ever more

as we look out our own front doors,

hear him speaking, “Now come to me.

just take my hand and you’ll be free.”

So Christmas comes and Christmas goes,

but Jesus stays, yes, this we know.

He is inside both you and me

and speaks his love eternally.

 

 

THE LEAP OF FAITH AND UNFAITH

Faith by its very nature includes doubt. Faith is not knowledge. Faith is a belief that something is true even though one cannot prove its veracity. We believe God exists, that God loves and forgives us, that we will be with God forever in our death but we also have some doubts, whether we admit to them or not. We have those doubts because we cannot prove any of that which we believe.

That does not mean that which we believe is simply unbelievable. It merely means that we cannot prove it to be by some scientific means. That is why there always seems to be this battle between faith and science. A scientist seems to need prove beyond a shadow of a doubt whereas a believer only demands enough evidence to accept the truth of what just might be true if one could only prove it scientifically.

Thus, for any believer there comes a moment in his or her seeking for the scientific truth that s/he must take what Kierkegaard called a “leap of faith”. Christianity, for instance, makes complete sense, even scientifically, until one comes up against the Trinity. Then one has to take that leap and say, “I believe even though I don’t completely understand. It makes enough sense, not complete sense, even if I cannot prove it empirically.”

People of faith take those leaps on a daily basis. We believe people will be trustworthy and true. We believe it is best to love our neighbors and even to love our enemies, not because as G. K. Chesterton once bemused “they are one and the same”, but because we have learned that loving is better than hating, that loving brings with it rewards and benefits that hating cannot and will not.

Yet people of faith are also tempted every day to take a leap of unfaith. That happens when our prayers to the God we believe in don’t seem to be answered, when something horrible happens to someone we love for no good or apparent reason, when our neighbor responds to our love not with indifference but with downright cruelty. In those times why believe? Why be a Christian? Why not leap back and away?

It would be wonderful and so much easier to live this life were there be no necessity to believe, where we could know all, where we would not have to trust in another, even in our God, but simply to know for sure and for certain. Or maybe not. As painful as it is sometimes to live this life as a believer, it is certainly not as dull and boring as it would be if everything were known for certain.

That truth may not help when we are in the midst of doubt and even despair because our faith has been tried and seems to have lost the battle. The grace is that our faith is strong enough that we keep on going rather than turn around and leap away from the God we believe in even though we cannot prove God’s existence.

In fact, it is when we seem to be most at a loss, most distant and most doubtful that we take that leap of faith. It is in those moments when we are tempted to turn around and turn away that God gives us a push and we leap further into God’s loving arms.

WHERE IS THERE?

Those who have children have heard the plaint many, many times, almost too many times it seems. We’re in the car and going somewhere and from somewhere behind us we hear the cranky question “Are we there yet?”. Of course, we’re not there yet. If we were, why would we still be driving and the complainer(s) from the back seat would be now running around to drive us even more crazy.

In life there is always a there. We are going somewhere: to the store, to school, to work, to play, over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house, wherever. Once we get there, we think we are there; and so we are, for a while anyway. Then it’s back on the road to where we came from. Another there. Life is full of journeys from here to there and back again. Sometimes, truly, when we get where we are going, we do not ever go back to from where we came.

Someone once observed that the road to success is always under construction. And the truth is that it truly is. For how do we define “success”? Probably in the same way we answer the question, “How much is enough?”. My suspicion is that those who deem themselves successful always wonder if they are really that successful, if they really do have enough. I would leave that for such to struggle with.

Another truth is life, the road through life, is always under construction. In this life we never really get there because we cannot define what that there is. We never know for sure if we have arrived there because tomorrow may move us from where we are to another there. Only in death have we finally arrived at the end of our destination. That’s when God says to us, “You’re there. You’re here. The journey is over.”

Thus, every day is a day on the road. As we go through the day, we construct that day by what we say and do. At the end of the day, we fall asleep and then wake up the next day to get on the road again: another day of construction. How well or how poorly our construction efforts are is up to us. Yes, so many others have an effect on what we are doing just as we have an effect on what they are doing, the day they are constructing. But what is ultimately important is what we are doing on our own behalf.

We can always build better, or if we have messed up the construction for the day, build back better tomorrow. If we do not, we’ll have even more work to do the next day. Yes, we need to be appreciative of the construction we did when we reflect back on the day at days end. But we must never believe that tomorrow cannot be better, that we nailed it. If sit back on our laurels and believe we have done enough, those nails will rust and our building will collapse.

Every day is a new day, an opportunity to construct it as best we can. You see, we’re never there until we’re finally there with God in eternity.

WHICH WAY TO GO?

The late, great philosopher Yogi Berra once opined, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Well, of course! We’ve all been there in our lives. We come to a point where we have to make a decision on what to do, which way to go, which option to choose. We can’t just stand there and gape. We have to make a decision and hope and pray that it is the right one, that we take the correct fork in the road.

How do we know what to do? Sometimes the answer is clear and we have no doubts about what to do. But not always given all the uncertainties in life. Even when we truly believe we made the right decision, events can happen that prevent the outcome that we had hoped. Perhaps we can never know for sure that we are taking the right fork in the road, but we have to take one anyway.

So how do we move on in quiet confidence even, with some trepidation of course? There’s an old African proverb that might help. “If you keep your head and heart going in the right direction, you won’t have to worry about your feet.” Exactly! My Mom used to tell us, “Use your head” after we had done something foolish, made the wrong choice. It was too late to undo what happened. She was just reminding us that if we had indeed used our head, we wouldn’t have done what we did.

Managers and coaches always tell their players the same thing: “Keep you head in the game.” When they do not, bad things happen. So, too, in life. If we keep using our head, keeping it in the game of life, if you will, we will more often than not make the right decision, take the right fork in the road.

But sometime more is also decided. If our heart is not into what we are doing, we will get into trouble, make wrong decisions. Athletes often retire earlier than what might seem normal because they will tell us that their hearts aren’t in it any more. People change jobs even though they are doing great work where they are because their heart isn’t in it any more. They need to move on and take another fork in their road in life.

When our head and our heart into what we are doing, where we are going, more often than not our feet will take us in the right direction. Yes, given the fact that we are not in total control of our life, the road we take, the decisions we make, might not turn out the way we had anticipated or hoped. That’s simply life. But even when that happened, what we discovered was that we made the best of it.

That is all we can hope for and, I believe, all that God asks of us or we can ask of ourselves. If we use our head, keep it in the game, and if we put our heart and soul into what we are doing and how we are living, more often than not our feet will take us where we need to go. And even when we do take the wrong road, somehow our head and our heart will get us back onto the right path – as we have all learned from experience.

LEARNING FROM OUR MISTAKES

As we grow older, there are times, probably too, too many, when we reflect back on the mistakes we made, we say to ourselves, “If I only knew then what I know now”. But by now, of course, it is too late to undo the mistakes, the wrongs, the foolish decisions we made back then. We have had to live with the consequences whatever those consequences have been. We had no choice. We couldn’t undo what we did.

We move on in life for that is how life is. To be sure there are times when we get stuck in the present as the present moves into the future and becomes the past. Something happened and we can’t seem to move on. Whether that something was of our own making or because it was something that happened to us, we got stuck. And we stayed stuck until somehow in some way we were able to move on.

Hopefully, when we finally did move on, we learned from whatever it was that caused us to get stuck in the first place. If we did not learn, we were and still are prone to get stuck again when something of the same sort happens again. And it will. Mistakes, wrongs done to or by us, foolish decisions, somehow never seem to vanish from our lives. They rise up to bite us every now and then. Such is life!

The good part is that as we grow older, these events become less as less. We have learned from the past. We move on and continue to do so, but we move on not so much looking over our shoulders for something bad to happen, but from the perspective of having learned from the past. A wise person once observed that life is lived forward but understood backward.

Isn’t that the truth?! (Double punctuation mark) We both realize that we have learned from the past on the one hand and are surprised to realize how much we did learn. Not only that, when reflecting back on those unfortunate incidents in the past, we often have to admit that, as bad as they might have been, as traumatic and painful they were, we are glad they happened because they led us to where we are today and we are thankful for where we are.

You see, if the bad had not happened, our life would have turned out differently and we have no idea what that life would have become. We may think it would have been better, but that is a moot point. Our life now is the result of everything in our life that has led us to where we are right now. We only understand where we are now when we look back on from where we came.

The blessing is that we have come this far because we have learned from the past, the good and the bad. And we will continue to be blessed in spite of the mistakes and foolish decisions and the bad that happens and which, given human nature we cannot avoid, if we continue to look forward, always learning from those backward glances.

DON’T THANK GOD TODAY

I would like to begin with a word of advice. And that is: Don't thank God. Not today, anyway. Tomorrow. The next day; but don't thank God today. Do something else. That something else is to thank all God's helpers: our mom and dad, the teachers we have or had in school; Peter, Paul and Mary; the neighbor down the street; even our brothers and sisters. They are all God's helpers.

For it is all of these people who make us realize that God is what it is all about. God does everything for us, but so much of what God does for us is done indirectly through others. He feeds us and clothes us as we grow up through mom and dad. He teaches us how to live in His world through the words and examples of Miss Simms in first grade and Mr. Johnson in eighth grade.  He encourages us through the examples of his saints and enlivens us through the music of his singers and the paintings of his artists. God works through others most of the time. Sure, in a pinch, God does it all by himself. But by and large God works through his children -- through you and through me.

For example: Is that old but warm coat you decided to get one more year out of still hanging in the closet from last year when you didn't get that year out of it that you said you would? Today would be a good day to take it to someone who needs it. That's God taking care of his children through his children. Matter of fact, the only way that God can and will see to it that that cold, little old lady has a warm coat to wear is through one of us getting it to her. God does not work like Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and wave a magic wand and poof!! new coat. We have to be that real Godchild who works, not magic, but love.

The Apostle John tells us that God is Love and he or she who lives in love, lives in God and God lives in that person. When we do something loving, it is God living in us who does it. And when someone does something loving for us, it is God living in the other who does it. Sometimes we forget about the God living in us and in others.

We must not. We need to spend some time, you and I, thinking about how much God really does love us: how God gave his son to us to live and die and be raised up -- all for us, all because God loves us. But as great an act of love that Jesus' death on the cross was for us, it would all be in vain if God did not continue to love us in those around us and love us in ourselves.

Jesus's death on the cross forgives all our sins. His resurrection from the dead gives us eternal life, even though we really don't deserve it. Those are great and fantastic gifts. But the greatest gift God gives us every day is his continual love for us that is shown to us in and through other people: mom and dad and teacher and friend and neighbor.

Knowing that I am forgiven and will have eternal life is great. But knowing that I am loved is absolutely necessary. I know God loves me because I see him loving me through you. You and I are called to make God's love known to others by our very lives. Thank God for his love. But don't thank God today. Thank those who love us through him.