“How we spend our days is how we spend our lives." —Annie Dillard
How’s life going? Do you sometimes feel like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons? He just can’t win. No matter what approach he takes, no matter how sophisticated, he never succeeds in capturing that pesky bird!
The problem: Mr. Coyote is stuck inside a paradox, a Catch-22.
His avian nemesis is much faster than he, and—because that’s not difficult enough—smarter than he looks. Mark Twain describes a coyote as “a living, breathing allegory of Want, He is always hungry.” That means there is no way Wile E. can win. His hunger means he has no choice but to continue chasing the Road Runner. He cannot do otherwise. Those are the “rules” he is forced to live by. That’s a Catch-22.
We, of course, are not cartoon characters.
We have a choice. We always have a choice. Unlike the coyote, we are not enslaved to our natures. Still, it may seem that we, too, are sometimes stuck in a Catch-22 situation. Each day, we apply ourselves to the often crazy and crippling “rules” of this life—only to find that, even when we win, there can be a serious downside. And when we lose? It can feel like we have no worth at all.
But there is a way out.
In this week’s Exodus passage, we meet two extraordinary people: Shiphrah and Puah. Despite being commanded by Pharaoh to kill all the male Hebrew babies, these two midwives risked their lives to do the exact opposite. Day in and day out, they helped deliver all the babies. Each delivery, by itself was a single event. But when they were aggregated, they became a legacy. Today, these two are heralded as heroes, people who stood in the gap to protect the defenseless.
This week’s Romans passage exhorts us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.” Shiphrah and Puah refused to be conformed to their world. Though mired in an impossible situation, they found a way to serve God.
It is often a shock to recognize that our day-in-day-out activity is our life. It might not seem like it in the moment, but what we do with each day builds up into our entire life. When all is said and done, it is what we actually do, not what we long for, that becomes our life.
After all, at its most basic, a tapestry is simply a collection of threads.
You don’t have to be stuck in a Catch-22. You actually can make your life have meaning well beyond what this world would have you believe. Take some time each day to spend with God: Renew your mind. It is the way to ensure you no longer conform to the Catch-22 rules of this world. Remember, what we do each day becomes our life.
How we live each day becomes our legacy.
_________________________
PHOTO: Steve Orr
_________________________
Join us Friday morning at DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. We meet at Our Breakfast Place and we start at 8:00-ish. It’s an hour of good food and good folk learning to serve God one day at a time.
Blessings,
Steve
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK
Find them here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts.php?id=156
Print them from here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/pdf//Ax_Proper16.pdf
Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 124
Isaiah 51:1-6
Psalm 138
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20
Proper 16 (21) (August 27, 2023)
No comments:
Post a Comment