How’s life going? Do you sometimes feel like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons? No matter what approach he takes, no matter how sophisticated, he never succeeds in capturing that pesky bird! His nemesis is faster and smarter. He just can’t win.
The problem: Mr. Coyote is stuck inside a paradox, a Catch-22.
Mark Twain describes a coyote as “a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.” If Twain is right, there is no way Wile E. Coyote can win. His hunger leaves him 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. We are not enslaved to our natures. Still, it may seem that we, too, are sometimes stuck in a Catch-22. 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 was a single event. But when 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.
We don’t have to be stuck in a Catch-22. We actually can make our lives have meaning well beyond what this world would have us 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.
What we do each day becomes our life.
How we live each day becomes our legacy.
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“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing." —Annie Dillard, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.
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PHOTO: Weaver at Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala (by Steve Orr)
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Join us Friday morning at DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast. We meet on Zoom* and in Waco at Our Breakfast Place. At 8:00 we start an hour of good food and good folk learning to serve God one day at a time.
Blessings,
Steve
*Zoom link (Zoom allows you to mute the camera and the microphone if you don’t wish to be seen or heard):
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89947678414
SCRIPTURES FOR SUNDAY AND THE COMING WEEK
Find them here
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/texts/?y=17134&z=p&d=70
Print them from here:
https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/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 23, 2026)
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