Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13
A Time to Talk, by Robert Frost
(Edward Connery Lathem, ed., The Poetry of Robert Frost, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, p. 124)
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, “What is it?”
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
How often do we get wrapped up in the busyness of our day and do not take the time to talk? Someone asks us a question, and we dispense with an efficient answer, so that we might get back to completing the task at hand, a step towards completing our mental list of tasks for the day. But, that is a moment lost, a time for relating to one another, a time for enjoying one another, perhaps a time for learning from one another….a time to talk. In our culture, we exalt productivity. We live by the clock, or our datebooks, or our blackberries, or our iPhones. We are striving to achieve, to reach that next place….where are we going?
Escapist—Never, by Robert Frost
(Edward Connery Lathem, ed., The Poetry of Robert Frost, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, p. 421)
He is no fugitive—escaped, escaping.
No one has seen him stumble looking back.
His fear is not behind him but beside him
On either hand to make his course perhaps
A crooked straightness yet no less a straightness.
He runs face forward. He is a pursuer.
He seeks a seeker who in his turn seeks
Another still, lost far into the distance.
Any who seek him seek in him the seeker.
His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever.
It is the future that creates his present.
All is an interminable chain of longing.
We achieve, we produce, we accomplish the task at hand and move onto the next. Where are we going?
In our Old Testament lesson today, Joshua tells the people to let go of foreign gods, to put away other gods, and serve only the Lord, the God of Israel. Joshua proclaims, “Incline your hearts to the Lord.” In our pursuit to achieve are we inclining our hearts to the Lord?
This past year, as Scott and I were moving from one large house project to another, a friend of mine gave me a chapter from the book Learning to Fall: Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Philip Simmons (White Plains, NY: Peter Pauper Press, Inc., 2002). I have since learned that Simmons was Associate Professor of English at Lake Forest College. He died in 2002, only in his early 40’s, from Lou Gehrig’s disease. The chapter is entitled “Unfinished Houses”. Simmons grew up in a part of New England where fixing up old houses was a constant. He offers an interesting insight into living for the future. “On some level all religious feeling begins with the sense that our true home lies elsewhere, however we may choose to define elsewhere: as psychic wholeness; as life in the beloved community; as a place of justice; as a harmonious relationship to the natural world; as union of our spirits with the Divine. In the journey to the elsewhere of our fond imagining we wish ourselves far from here, far from the suffering of our lives, far from our unfinished houses and our unfinished selves. The unsettling news is that we’ll never reach that elsewhere of our longing as long as we remain in this life, as long as we remain human. Heaven has its place, and our desire for it may guide us, ethically and spiritually, to work for the good. But in our desire always to be elsewhere than here, we can lose what measure of heaven may be ours on earth. When our fantasies of a better life consume us, when our memories of past hurts bind us and fears of pending calamity drive us, we are robbed of the only gift—the greatest gift—we can be sure of possessing: the present moment. We cannot summon the future, we cannot remake the past. The present moment is the unfinished house in which we dwell” (pp. 47-48). Hope of eternal life is the framework of Christian life. Yet, we are called to live in this life, in the present moment, with our hearts inclined to the Lord. Achievement can be a framework, also – yet, all the while, we can live in the present moment, we can honor and cherish the present moment. How might we live in the present, with our hearts inclined to the Lord?
Dorothy C. Bass, in her book Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., 2001), shows us that time is a gift and that “how we live in time shapes the quality of our relationships with our innermost selves, with other people, with the natural world, and with God” (p. vii). She helps us receive the gift of time by encouraging us to pattern our lives around God. We might start by simply thanking God for the day each morning as we rise from our bed. We might find a few minutes each morning to read the Daily Office, a two-year lectionary which provides a psalm, an Old Testament reading, a New Testament reading, and a Gospel lesson for each day throughout the year. Year 1 of the Daily Office will begin on November 30th this year, the first Sunday of Advent. The order of the lectionary is listed in the back of the Book of Common Prayer. Or, you can purchase the Daily Office Readings, with the lessons printed out for each day. We might prefer to read from the Book of Common Prayer, which in the opening pages includes morning prayers, noonday prayers, evening prayers, and compline, prayers for the close of the day. We might also not only pattern our lives around the January to December calendar, or around the September to June school calendar, but around the church calendar – beginning with Advent, through the seasons of Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost. When we pattern our lives around God, we live into the fullness of Creation. God is not simply a part of our life on Sunday morning. Our life is a gift from God.
Our life in the present moment, in every present moment, is a gift from God. And, when we lose sight of time as a gift, the present moment is lost. Incline your heart to the Lord, and reap the fullness of life.
A Time to Talk, by Robert Frost
(Edward Connery Lathem, ed., The Poetry of Robert Frost, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969, p. 124)
When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, “What is it?”
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.
