Yesterday was a cloudy, rainy day in Collinsville, a lazy day. Diane and I sat on the back porch and listened to the birds. One bird, a cardinal I think, chirped loudly from the tree next door, and from a tree in our yard came an answer. This “conversation” went on for a long time. Diane imagined that the first bird was saying, “I’m going to the grocery store. Do you need anything?” The other bird answered, “Yeah, could you pick up some worms?” Sitting there, doing nothing, was good for our souls.
A robin hopped to the edge of the roof ridge on our neighbor’s garage. Sat there for awhile, looking around, and then flew off to… I don’t know where but obviously the bird had something to do. I thought of people who had things they had to do, whose days are filled with work. Dr. Thomas Egger, my successor at Concordia Seminary, Pastors Kyle Wright and Arthur Eichhorn, who now serve congregations where I was pastor many years ago, came to mind. I don’t know the specific tasks they face, but I know very well the general nature of their work. Been there, done that, for many years. I reflected on all of you have to, get to, go to work every day.
The other day in class a student shared an article from the New York Times about “languishing.” The reporter said many people are “languishing” these Covid days. I wonder if that’s caused, at least in part, by our always being so busy that we don’t know how to sit and do nothing, to sit and just be. These days I am spending much of my time thinking earnestly about the life to come, and am reading deeply in theology and the Bible. There’s biblical reason to think this satisfaction I feel sitting quietly in the goodness of creation may be a little glimpse of heaven.
“I’m going to the grocery store. What do you want for supper?” “How about toasted-cheese sandwiches?” That wasn’t the birds; it was Diane and Dale. Whatever your busyness today, may you find time for the peace that passes all understanding. “A man who would live in this frenzied time without being himself in a frenzy must learn that life has room enough for solitude, and creation, but much of one’s solitude is caught in a crowd” (Carlyle Marney).
Comments