For Such A Time as This June 17, 2020 – Dennis Lohr

To the Good Folk of the Palmyra Church of the Brethren,

Joys and Concerns

If you have a joy or concern you would like us to share and pray about, please call, text or email it to Bill.  If you would like it included in our Sunday Worship sharing and prayer time, please share it with Bill that week by Friday morning.

Thank You:  

To all who call others to check in on them and share our emails and devotions.

Today’s Devotion:

I have written today’s devotion.  I hope you find it meaningful.

Shalom, Dennis

Scripture - Ecclesiastes 10:18 (ESV – English Standard Version)

If a man is lazy, the rafters sag; if his hands are idle, the house leaks.

Thoughts

I’ve been spending some time today in the Bible’s wisdom literature.  I’ve mostly been in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, though Job, Psalms and the Song of Solomon are also considered wisdom literature.  In the New Testament, James is often considered wisdom literature.  Wisdom literature seeks to give practical advice on everyday living.

The above text struck me as very straight forward.  I thought, “Yep, that about says it.”  Short cuts and quick fixes usually result in poor outcomes.  Life requires some work.  There are tasks to perform each day.  When those tasks are ignored, things pile up, get messy, start to deteriorate, and create more problems.  These problems can easily require more time to address that the time it would have taken to do things well in the first place.  It’s much easier to take the time to build a rafter well, before it is installed, than to repair or replace it once the house has been built. 

I’m not sure though that our challenge is laziness as much as it is being too busy.  I hear that the lawn and garden and home project industries are doing well right now.  Spending more time at home has created opportunities to see and perhaps the time and motivation to do some of the things that we are normally moving too fast to see and are too busy to take care of.  I hear that doing these maintenance things are actually good for our mental health.

Perhaps the inconveniences of this present moment will remind us of some important things that our normal pace of life has forgotten or pushed to the side.  Perhaps we’ve been so busy that our spirits were starting to sag, and our souls were starting to leak.  Perhaps the challenges of this present moment and our ways of coping are reminding us how to take care of our spirits and our souls, as we tend to good tasks of everyday living.

Prayer

Gracious God, you are as present in our busyness and our technology as you are in our daily routines of care and in the soil of our flower beds.  Help us to find balance.  And once we find it, help us to hold onto it, even after life goes back to “normal.”  Amen.