I am with you always
In AA meetings the question is asked: anyone here with a 30-day birthday? That person is cheered. Thirty days of sobriety and a green shoot breaks through the stony crust. A small light glows in the darkness. We celebrate birth. Each new beginning gives reason to hope.
Jacob set out to find a wife from his mother’s distant clan. The trip would take his lifetime. Near a shrine Jacob slept on the ground, his head resting on a stone. The hardness of his pillow gave way to strange, comforting dreams. He would be home someday. Jacob and God exchanged promises: all the nations of the earth would find a blessing in Jacob and his descendants.
Thinking can run amuck. Sometimes mere order masquerades as truth. Splitting off the finite from the infinite seems clear enough. On this side lies the world. Outside this world is the Supreme Being. Between them stands an abyss. But earth beyond the reach of heaven would fall like a stone into a bottomless pit. Apart from God, the finite is not sustained. In Jacob’s dream, a stairway joins heaven and earth. The stairs are crowded with traffic that rises and descends. God is present in our lives. Each one matters to God. This landlord is no absentee.
We readily pray when we are drowning. Sometime drowning wakes us up. It was just a dream. Things are not as bad as we fear. You lighten our load in the night.
Jeanne Schuler
We live in the city near the university with our three children, so work and family form almost a whole…but not a seamless whole. Family, faith, work, old neighborhoods, leftist (leftover) politics, and enough community are my measures of reality. Also, a good dog named Sid.
Scripture has depths missing from other forms of wisdom. This is closer to the ground we walk on.
