Finally, cold for walking with a brisk wind to sort of add a bit of snap to the walking pace. Felt good though. It is the last day of November, after all, and one should expect that. Also end of the hurricane season, and the report is we lucked out. A low pressure system kept some storms steered to the north away from the East coast, and a high pressure system kept storms away from the Gulf. Thank the lord for His presence.
“God made people simple, but they have discovered many inventions”. The MSG puts this like so: “God made men true and upright. We’re the ones who made a mess of things."
The verse is Ecclesiastes 7,29. And it speaks to us of life, which is, basically, really quite simple. We sleep, we rise, eat and work, eat some more, relax a bit, then sleep again. Simple, straightforward, until we mess it up.
Remember that poem called “The Dash”. It reports on a funeral statement about someone and says the stone lists two dates connected by a dash, and it is what happened in that dash that is important.
Here is the way it ends.
“What matters is how you live and love,
And how you spend your dash.”
Micah, a prophet who burst on the world scene in the 8th century, along with Isaiah, Hosea and Amos, speaks to keep God alive before the people. They live with disaster they cannot seem to grasp, and Micah speaks to them to remind them that God, their God, is alive and active still.
In chapter 6 God speaks directly to the people. The verse that makes the plea best is verse 8. “He has told thee, O Man, how to live; and what does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” 6,8. Away with all the rigermole they had been working, just do His will quietly and “walk humbly with Thy God”.
That’s what makes life simple. His commandments are not grievous, said St. John.
But we tend to complicate matters. One small example is just doing a simple task. We do it right, and the thing is done. When we make mistakes, we have to do it over, or the mistake causes other things to go wrong and we need to fix that too. Or a student is given an assignment. It takes maybe 20 minutes or so of his time, but he puts it off, and suddenly the time has slipped by and his homework is not done, and he blames what?
Finally it comes down to this, “What must I do to be saved?” and the answer is always the same, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”.
So, life is simple, don’t make it complex by adding, by all the things that get in the way of this rule. Life is simple. WE are the ones who makes a mess of things. I pray, learn this, life is simple.
GPD 11/30/10
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