Meditation for Sunday, November 11th

“Unless the LORD builds the hours, their labor is in vain who build it.”

Oh hear now how the proud claim, “I built that!” —

smug in abundance, demanding of praise,

no credit to the carpenter,

anonymous hands bought and bruised to raise

temples of conceit on the habitat

of the wild, the poor, the stranger.

“Unless the LORD builds the house,

their labor is in vain who build it.”

The tests and triumphs of mere mortal rule,

at best, may imitate a discerned

intent of our one Creator,

at worst, displace eternal gifts un-earned

with fleeting fragile robes consumed as fuel

to warm bare greed’s known successor.

Meditation For Sunday August 19th (Proper 15): Wisdom

Our first reading tells how Solomon asks God for wisdom. Our psalm mentions some of God’s great deeds, and mentions wisdom and praise of God. The epistle advises us to live as wise people, filled with the Spirit, ‘as we sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among ourselves, singing and making melody to God in our hearts.’ (Church musicians often like this!) All this is well and good, but then we hear one of those mystifying, weird passages from John’s Gospel that seem likely to alienate inquirers…(unless one knows about Holy Communion, and in that setting none of his disciples did, and none of the other Jews did.) Having eternal life, being raised up on the last day, living forever—these are attractive promises intermingled with the strange stuff. How would the wise person deal with all this? Ask God for wisdom about how to share the Good News?