Shade Tree Wisdom 9/27/08

Yes, we’ve been to Disney world in Florida. We were there right after they opened, right after new year when the playground was on the radio asking people to come because there were few visits after school vacations. We were there before we needed to take out an extra loan to have the funds to pay the entrance fee.

And when you visit, did you notice how main street looked? Nicely and freshly scrubbed and painted, yet the buildings are not full size. The Disney architects have discovered if they make buildings a little smaller, they give people a sense of well being. They feel as if they belong there. It gives people a homey feeling of belonging.

That’s what the world does best, try to make us feel ‘at home’ with its wayward ways. And, strange as it sounds, the world does watch how we act. Jesus spoke of this in His sermon on the Mount when He said, “You are the salt of the earth”, and He also called us “The light of the world’. Matthew 5, 13.14. So “let your light so shine before me that they may see your good works, and glorify your father which is in heaven” 5,16.

A prison chaplain tells of a prisoner who came to believe. One fellow snorted and thought to himself, “Yea, he just wants to get out early”. But later this man wrote a letter to the Christian prisoner. “I watched you at work in the machine shop, I watched you as we were eating. I watched you in your talk and the stories you told, and because I did, I am now a Christian”.

IKE did some of this, sort of brought us together. Neighborhoods came out of their homes and shared food they cooked, helped clean each other’s yard, acted like neighbors, talking and exchanging small talk and experiences.

Does it need to take such disaster to bring out the best in people? The Psalmist mentions this, when he says, “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your word”. Psalm 119,67. He then goes on, (the Living Bible), “The punishment you gave me is the best thing that could have happened to me, for it taught me to pay attention to your laws.” 119, 71.72.

But this change, to be a “salt of the earth”, and become a “Light of the world”, does not happen because we try to become a light, it happens because, as St. Paul reminds us forcefully, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2,20. The change comes from The Holy Spirit placed in us by Baptism.

Oh, we do not come up to what we need to be, and yet, we know God sees us always through the blood of Jesus, and so we say, calmly, “I confess my transgressions unto the lord, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin”. Psalm 32,5.

GPD 9/27/08