"Kinetics................................"

It’s not even been a complete week yet since we broke for Christmas break and already I have found myself having to pause and determine what day it is more than once. Take away the act of routine, the scheduling of our life in some form or fashion, and it all begins to be regulated by nothing more than the earth’s rotation around the sun. You get up, go through the motions, crawl into bed, and arise in the morning to do it all over again. When Jesus stated the Sabbath to have been made for man, I wonder if He meant that in terms of worship, rest, or just giving us a basic means of marking our existence. My book collection has just about everything that Frederick Buechner ever published in the way of sermons; so, having extinguished that source of manna, I recently devoured his fictional tale of a twelfth-century “holy” man, a biography of his life wherein one is fed the details (as the blurb on the back puts it) “in domestic reality”. What one sees is Godric’s humanity, his sin, his conversion, his stumble through the darkness from beginning to end. His mother, in one place, puts breathing in terms of her having had no space for anything other than labor and therefore being willing to let truth be her final judge. “Let the monks, nuns, and priests,” she says, “have care of faith!” Her son, however, puzzles himself with it all, wondering if he is daft and time no more than a “sea where hours float”, a place where we’ve all been simply swimming around and going nowhere with any purpose to it. Some might, in my opinion; but few of us, I think, dog-paddle without any attachments at all. The question of concern, however, is whether, in the middle of our mess, His anchor-line has us secured, His promise not just written in a Book, but an inner reality rising to meet us in our journey. That doesn’t necessarily require seclusion and separation, just a heart willing and hungry to know Him in the connection…..