Fifth Sunday Of Easter
Preaching
Lectionary Preaching Workbook
Series VI, Cycle C
Object:
COMMENTARY ON THE LESSONS
Lesson 1: Acts 11:1-18 (C)
Peter here explains to his Jewish friends and admirers why he now believes the teachings of Jesus are for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. After reporting some rather elaborate visions and his trip to the home of Cornelius, he explains that these visions clearly led him to this belief. His friends then accepted his explanation, and we find here the early stages of the universalizing of the Christian faith.
In preaching, this could be used as a basis for the missionary imperative of the Christian faith. Possibly a sermon on the need to support our missionaries in other lands. Or, it could be the basis of a sermon on witnessing to friends and acquaintances who are not in the Christian faith as a way of commending our faith to others. (Not being preachy in the obnoxious sense, though. Loving conduct is the best argument, and that includes letting other people be free to make up their own minds about their religious beliefs.) A third possibility occurs to me, and it's the one I would settle on: The importance of living in love and mutual acceptance with other Christians who live by a different understanding of the faith from our own. I myself have a stepdaughter who is a borderline fundamentalist. Frankly, I am simply unable to understand how anyone can be a fundamentalist. A good education in Jewish history, biblical commentary, and systematic theology doesn't leave that point of view as an option. Yet she is a wonderfully loving person. She, however, has found a deep and sustaining faith in the Bible without in any way criticizing it or quarreling with its literal reports. She loves me dearly but can't quite understand why I can't just accept as literal truth everything I read in the Bible. But we love each other, and we treat each other with love, with mutual respect as regards our differing interpretations, and we both agree that if our faith is fulfilling, gives our lives meaning, and leads us to be loving human beings, then we must leave it at that. This relationships leads me to generalize it and believe that the many various ways of understanding the Bible are to be valued, not by their intellectual or historical correctness (as I might see things) but by the kind of people we become because of our faith.
Lesson 1:Acts 14:21-27 (RC)
Paul and Barnabas carry the word to many places. The sermon opportunity in my mind comes in verse 22b: "We must pass through many troubles to enter the Kingdom of God." These would include all the inward struggles to be forgiving, to serve others, to be generous with our time and money. It would also include the demands of total honesty in business and social activities. Also, it would include the rare but not unheard of derision suffered by those who adhere to high moral precepts when among those who do not.
Lesson 1: Acts 13:44-52 (E)
Paul and Barnabas preach to the Jews who make fun of them and quarrel with them. Paul and Barnabas then inform them that because of this conduct they will now take the word to the Gentiles. The preaching theme here could be essentially that of the earlier passage, Acts 11:1-18.
Lesson 2: Revelation 21:1-6 (C); Revelation 21:1-5 (RC)
This passage echoes Isaiah's words, the promise of a new world, a holy city, set on a hill. Marvelous imagery here, turning our thoughts to the culmination of history as we know it. In preaching, I would acknowledge the hope that is intended for us all, but inasmuch as this hasn't literally taken place in the nearly 2,000 years since these words were written, and inasmuch as the New Testament generally promises an after life, I myself consider that this describes the hope we all have for life after death. In preaching on this passage I would explore the promises we find in the Bible which promise that life.
Lesson 2: Revelation 19:1, 4-9 (E)
John's vision declares the Lordship of God and the identification of Jesus the Lamb with God. All must worship the Lamb.
Gospel: John 13:31-35 (C, RC, E)
This may be one of the New Testament's most important passages. Jesus here explains that the glory of God is, after all is said and done, the revelation of the fundamental nature of creation: the divine will that we all love each other. When we see that love exemplified in another person's life, we see that such person is a disciple of Jesus. This does raise an interesting question. Suppose an individual performs an act of selfless love, yet does not claim a knowledge of Jesus Christ. I recently watched a heroic rescue recorded on television. A fire on the thirteenth floor of a building marooned a man who had made his way to a window. Heavy smoke was pouring out the window. The man was obviously nearly unconscious. Finally, he stood in the window sill precariously perched thirteen floors above the street below. The smoke grew thicker and we could see that the man was about to fall. Meanwhile, the fire department had raised ladders, but they only reached to a point several floors below the man.
At the top of the building a couple floors above, some firemen appeared. One of them shouldered himself into a harness and was lowered down to the window where the endangered man stood, nearly collapsing. I watched in horror because I don't like heights. The fireman reached the man who then collapsed into his arms. Interviewed later, the man said he was completely unconscious. Now the fireman was holding this heavy, dead weight with his arms and legs wrapped around the man, and at this point, his friends at the top of the building realized that the two were so heavy they couldn't pull them back up. Neither was the cable long enough to lower them to the ground. Now both were in serious danger. It must have occurred to the fireman that he could save himself by letting the unconscious man fall. But he refused. For a long time they hung there. Finally, desperately, the fireman smashed his arm through a window on the twelfth floor. With incredible strength, he managed to hold on until other firemen, seeing this, found their way to the two and pulled them in. Interviewed later, the fireman, when commended for his incredible heroism, replied, "That's my job, to save lives."
As I reflected on this, and as I realized that man was doing a job I wouldn't do for a billion dollars, I wondered about his religious faith. He risked his life for a man he had never met. Whether the man's a Christian or not, he was surely acting out the Christian faith in a marvelous way. This kind of thing prevents me from believing that only people who specifically and verbally declare their faith are disciples of Jesus.
SERMON SUGGESTIONS
Title: "Making Christ Alive Again"
Text: Acts 11:1-18
Theme: One of the finest men I have known is the pastor of a fundamentalist church. We had occasion to become good friends while doing some studies together. Our discussions were always good-natured. We disagreed on a host of issues, and yet I found this man to be one of the kindest, most loving people I have known. Actually, any number of my friends have more or less different ideas about the faith and about Jesus than mine. We're still friends, and the reason we're friends is we each respect the other person's beliefs. I once had a good friendship with a Catholic priest (now deceased). We discovered that we agreed on many more subjects than those on which we disagreed, but even so, we respected each other and agreed that maybe, like the philosopher's elephant, there is more truth than any one mind can contain.
1. Respect the other person's faith. Most of us have friends who differ from us. Also, there are many people who don't have many friends, who are lonely, and who sometimes keep potential friends at arm's length by insisting that they and only they are right.
2. The best way to make the point is by being a loving person. I suspect that when we all gather some other place, some other time, Jesus will reveal that God didn't care all that much where we went to church or what our denomination might be. God will care about two facts: did my faith teach me to serve others with selfless love, and was I faithful to what I sincerely believed.
Title: "When We Die"
Text: Revelation 21:1-6
Theme: Emphasis on verse 4: "He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain." What a wondrous promise. I watched television last night as the hundreds of thousands of Kosovars streamed into Albania and Macedonia from their horrible suffering in Yugoslavia. I saw little girls staring glassy eyed, old women near death, young men humiliated at their helplessness, young women humiliated. How I wished I could make this promise real to them as I watched. But you see, God has made this promise to all of us.
1. There is another wonderful world. Call it life after death. It's for all who believe, who trust.
2. We still have to face this life. It would be a mistake merely to endure until that life. Certainly, we would be wrong to hurry ourselves along to that life. But when it comes, at the proper time, it will be real. Meanwhile, our job is to do what we can to facilitate those very promises to other people in this life.
3. One wise man said that "Only when we are not afraid to die are we not afraid to live." That's a Christian statement. Read Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, for a wonderful assortment of people who lived by this maxim.
4. Nevertheless, when we die in the faith, there will be answers, and there will be glorious promises, promises fulfilled.
Title: "The Measure Of Our Faith"
Text: John 13:31-35
Theme: Here again we have the theme of making love concrete. We might, this time, examine just what Jesus meant by the word "love." Is a parent who is highly permissive because she hates to spoil her child's good times in high school acting in love? Norman Vincent Peale once told of his jealousy of a playmate when he was very young. The playmate was free to play after school, while Peale's folks made him come in and do his homework. Through their growing up years, the other boy seemed to Peale to have all the fun. But by the college years, Peale discovered he was well prepared for his future while the other boy dropped out of school, unable to finish. Peale said he finally realized that his parents were demanding, not out of perverse lack of concern for their son, but because they loved him.
Love must have a strong side. While it is composed of kindness, gentleness, forbearance, and understanding, it is also composed of discipline, sometimes brutal honesty, and firm demands. This might be related to child rearing. It could be related to employment (the loving employer who expects responsibility and exacting effort from those whom he employs). When Jesus spoke his occasional harsh word, it wasn't an unfeeling demand to shape up or else, it was an urgent call to the long range benefits of his suffering by accepting the short range demands of the faith.
1. Love always has the element of sacrifice. The parent who insists his child do his work so he himself doesn't have to worry about it isn't being loving. The parent who insists because he wants the child to learn responsibility, even though it hurts a little to see him miss out on some fun activity is loving. Sacrifice takes place when we inconvenience ourselves for someone else. Leo Buscaglia told of being snowbound in O'Hare Airport in Chicago. For two days no plane went in or out. Some people were very uptight by the time that was over. But one middle-aged woman went to several harried looking young parents and said, "I've always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. I'm going to start a kindergarten right here in the airport. I'll take as many children as I can, and you parents go get something to eat and get away by yourselves for a bit." That was love.
2. Love always has the element of discipline. I'm healthy today because a doctor friend of mine ran a test he didn't actually have to do for me because I had a stubborn health problem. It revealed that I had cancer. He sent me to the hospital where it was removed and the pathology report came back the other day saying I was clear. I'm okay. But I'm okay because that doctor broke his neck all through med school and afterwards in order to be, not just a loving doctor, but to be a good loving doctor.
3. Love always has the element of forgiveness. We all suffer mistreatment of one kind or another in this life. Sometimes it was intentional, sometimes it was not. Either way, some people hold a grudge. But true love doesn't allow that. If you wish to be a loving person, you must be a forgiving person.
4. Love always has the element of kindness. This will be the third or fourth time I've quoted Bishop Fulton Sheen in this book: "Love has three elements: kindness, kindness, and kindness." I watched a basketball game on television the other day. The score was tied, it was a tournament game, one team took the ball down the court, passed the ball around, then when time was about to run out one player stepped aside to take the last shot and the ball slipped out of his perspiring hands, out of bounds. This left the other team three or four seconds. They passed the ball in, threw it full court, an opposing player hit a last second basket. That boy's mistake cost his team the game. When the game ended, the boy walked to the sideline, and he looked like he could cry. The coach walked over, put an arm around that kid's shoulders, and whispered to him like a loving dad. In one of the roughest of sports, that coach showed the element of love: kindness.
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
Dave Barry points out that "death comes to all living things except crabgrass."
____________
Minnie Remembers
God
My hands are old.
I've never said that out loud before.
But they are.
I was so proud of them once.
They were soft,
Like velvet smoothness of a firm ripe peach.
Now the softness is like worn out sheets
Or withered leaves.
When did these slender, graceful hands
Become gnarled, shrunken?
They lie here in my lap;
Naked reminders of the rest of this old body
That has served me too well.
How long has it been since someone touched me?
Twenty years?
Twenty years I've been a widow,
Respected, smiled at,
But never touched.
Never held close to another body.
Never held so close and warm that loneliness was
Blotted out.
I remember how my mother used to hold me, God.
When I was hurt in spirit or flesh
She would gather me close
Stroke my silky hair and caress
My back with her warm hands.
Oh God, I'm so lonely!
I remember the first boy who ever kissed me.
We were both so new at that.
The taste of young lips and popcorn,
The feeling deep inside of mysteries to come.
I remember Hank and the babies.
How can I remember them but together?
Out of the fumbling, awkward attempts of new lovers
Came the babies.
And as they grew, so did our love.
And, God, Hank didn't seem to care if my body thickened
And faded a little.
He still loved it,
And touched it,
And we didn't mind if we were no longer "beautiful."
And the children hugged me a lot.
Oh God, I'm lonely!
Why didn't we raise the kids to be silly and affectionate?
As well as dignified and proper?
You see, they do their duty.
They drive up in their fine cars.
They come to my room and pay their respects.
They chatter brightly,
And reminisce.
But they don't touch me.
They call me "Mom" or "Grandma"
Never Minnie.
My mother called me Minnie.
And my friends.
Hank called me Minnie too.
But they're gone.
And so is Minnie.
Only Grandma is here.
And, God, she is lonely!
-- By Donna Swanson
____________
"The final test of religion is not religiousness, but love ... not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life."
-- Henry Drummond
____________
Song from the late '60s:
I spent a day without a friend,
Though we sat together long.
We talked and talked and said a lot,
But still I was alone.
____________
Robert Ingersoll stood at the grave of his brother and said: "Life is a narrow veil between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive to look beyond their heights. We cry aloud and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. But hope sees a star, and in the night of death, listening love can hear the rustle of an angel's wing."
____________
Psalm Of The Day
Psalm 148 -- "Praise the Lord!"
Prayer Of The Day
Open my eyes that I might see the needs of those around me, O Lord. Arm me with kindness, that I might overcome my aggressive impulses and stop, instead, to help someone else. Grant me the serenity to relax my own sense of pressure, that I might in some way lessen the stress of another. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
Lesson 1: Acts 11:1-18 (C)
Peter here explains to his Jewish friends and admirers why he now believes the teachings of Jesus are for the Gentiles as well as the Jews. After reporting some rather elaborate visions and his trip to the home of Cornelius, he explains that these visions clearly led him to this belief. His friends then accepted his explanation, and we find here the early stages of the universalizing of the Christian faith.
In preaching, this could be used as a basis for the missionary imperative of the Christian faith. Possibly a sermon on the need to support our missionaries in other lands. Or, it could be the basis of a sermon on witnessing to friends and acquaintances who are not in the Christian faith as a way of commending our faith to others. (Not being preachy in the obnoxious sense, though. Loving conduct is the best argument, and that includes letting other people be free to make up their own minds about their religious beliefs.) A third possibility occurs to me, and it's the one I would settle on: The importance of living in love and mutual acceptance with other Christians who live by a different understanding of the faith from our own. I myself have a stepdaughter who is a borderline fundamentalist. Frankly, I am simply unable to understand how anyone can be a fundamentalist. A good education in Jewish history, biblical commentary, and systematic theology doesn't leave that point of view as an option. Yet she is a wonderfully loving person. She, however, has found a deep and sustaining faith in the Bible without in any way criticizing it or quarreling with its literal reports. She loves me dearly but can't quite understand why I can't just accept as literal truth everything I read in the Bible. But we love each other, and we treat each other with love, with mutual respect as regards our differing interpretations, and we both agree that if our faith is fulfilling, gives our lives meaning, and leads us to be loving human beings, then we must leave it at that. This relationships leads me to generalize it and believe that the many various ways of understanding the Bible are to be valued, not by their intellectual or historical correctness (as I might see things) but by the kind of people we become because of our faith.
Lesson 1:Acts 14:21-27 (RC)
Paul and Barnabas carry the word to many places. The sermon opportunity in my mind comes in verse 22b: "We must pass through many troubles to enter the Kingdom of God." These would include all the inward struggles to be forgiving, to serve others, to be generous with our time and money. It would also include the demands of total honesty in business and social activities. Also, it would include the rare but not unheard of derision suffered by those who adhere to high moral precepts when among those who do not.
Lesson 1: Acts 13:44-52 (E)
Paul and Barnabas preach to the Jews who make fun of them and quarrel with them. Paul and Barnabas then inform them that because of this conduct they will now take the word to the Gentiles. The preaching theme here could be essentially that of the earlier passage, Acts 11:1-18.
Lesson 2: Revelation 21:1-6 (C); Revelation 21:1-5 (RC)
This passage echoes Isaiah's words, the promise of a new world, a holy city, set on a hill. Marvelous imagery here, turning our thoughts to the culmination of history as we know it. In preaching, I would acknowledge the hope that is intended for us all, but inasmuch as this hasn't literally taken place in the nearly 2,000 years since these words were written, and inasmuch as the New Testament generally promises an after life, I myself consider that this describes the hope we all have for life after death. In preaching on this passage I would explore the promises we find in the Bible which promise that life.
Lesson 2: Revelation 19:1, 4-9 (E)
John's vision declares the Lordship of God and the identification of Jesus the Lamb with God. All must worship the Lamb.
Gospel: John 13:31-35 (C, RC, E)
This may be one of the New Testament's most important passages. Jesus here explains that the glory of God is, after all is said and done, the revelation of the fundamental nature of creation: the divine will that we all love each other. When we see that love exemplified in another person's life, we see that such person is a disciple of Jesus. This does raise an interesting question. Suppose an individual performs an act of selfless love, yet does not claim a knowledge of Jesus Christ. I recently watched a heroic rescue recorded on television. A fire on the thirteenth floor of a building marooned a man who had made his way to a window. Heavy smoke was pouring out the window. The man was obviously nearly unconscious. Finally, he stood in the window sill precariously perched thirteen floors above the street below. The smoke grew thicker and we could see that the man was about to fall. Meanwhile, the fire department had raised ladders, but they only reached to a point several floors below the man.
At the top of the building a couple floors above, some firemen appeared. One of them shouldered himself into a harness and was lowered down to the window where the endangered man stood, nearly collapsing. I watched in horror because I don't like heights. The fireman reached the man who then collapsed into his arms. Interviewed later, the man said he was completely unconscious. Now the fireman was holding this heavy, dead weight with his arms and legs wrapped around the man, and at this point, his friends at the top of the building realized that the two were so heavy they couldn't pull them back up. Neither was the cable long enough to lower them to the ground. Now both were in serious danger. It must have occurred to the fireman that he could save himself by letting the unconscious man fall. But he refused. For a long time they hung there. Finally, desperately, the fireman smashed his arm through a window on the twelfth floor. With incredible strength, he managed to hold on until other firemen, seeing this, found their way to the two and pulled them in. Interviewed later, the fireman, when commended for his incredible heroism, replied, "That's my job, to save lives."
As I reflected on this, and as I realized that man was doing a job I wouldn't do for a billion dollars, I wondered about his religious faith. He risked his life for a man he had never met. Whether the man's a Christian or not, he was surely acting out the Christian faith in a marvelous way. This kind of thing prevents me from believing that only people who specifically and verbally declare their faith are disciples of Jesus.
SERMON SUGGESTIONS
Title: "Making Christ Alive Again"
Text: Acts 11:1-18
Theme: One of the finest men I have known is the pastor of a fundamentalist church. We had occasion to become good friends while doing some studies together. Our discussions were always good-natured. We disagreed on a host of issues, and yet I found this man to be one of the kindest, most loving people I have known. Actually, any number of my friends have more or less different ideas about the faith and about Jesus than mine. We're still friends, and the reason we're friends is we each respect the other person's beliefs. I once had a good friendship with a Catholic priest (now deceased). We discovered that we agreed on many more subjects than those on which we disagreed, but even so, we respected each other and agreed that maybe, like the philosopher's elephant, there is more truth than any one mind can contain.
1. Respect the other person's faith. Most of us have friends who differ from us. Also, there are many people who don't have many friends, who are lonely, and who sometimes keep potential friends at arm's length by insisting that they and only they are right.
2. The best way to make the point is by being a loving person. I suspect that when we all gather some other place, some other time, Jesus will reveal that God didn't care all that much where we went to church or what our denomination might be. God will care about two facts: did my faith teach me to serve others with selfless love, and was I faithful to what I sincerely believed.
Title: "When We Die"
Text: Revelation 21:1-6
Theme: Emphasis on verse 4: "He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain." What a wondrous promise. I watched television last night as the hundreds of thousands of Kosovars streamed into Albania and Macedonia from their horrible suffering in Yugoslavia. I saw little girls staring glassy eyed, old women near death, young men humiliated at their helplessness, young women humiliated. How I wished I could make this promise real to them as I watched. But you see, God has made this promise to all of us.
1. There is another wonderful world. Call it life after death. It's for all who believe, who trust.
2. We still have to face this life. It would be a mistake merely to endure until that life. Certainly, we would be wrong to hurry ourselves along to that life. But when it comes, at the proper time, it will be real. Meanwhile, our job is to do what we can to facilitate those very promises to other people in this life.
3. One wise man said that "Only when we are not afraid to die are we not afraid to live." That's a Christian statement. Read Tom Brokaw's book, The Greatest Generation, for a wonderful assortment of people who lived by this maxim.
4. Nevertheless, when we die in the faith, there will be answers, and there will be glorious promises, promises fulfilled.
Title: "The Measure Of Our Faith"
Text: John 13:31-35
Theme: Here again we have the theme of making love concrete. We might, this time, examine just what Jesus meant by the word "love." Is a parent who is highly permissive because she hates to spoil her child's good times in high school acting in love? Norman Vincent Peale once told of his jealousy of a playmate when he was very young. The playmate was free to play after school, while Peale's folks made him come in and do his homework. Through their growing up years, the other boy seemed to Peale to have all the fun. But by the college years, Peale discovered he was well prepared for his future while the other boy dropped out of school, unable to finish. Peale said he finally realized that his parents were demanding, not out of perverse lack of concern for their son, but because they loved him.
Love must have a strong side. While it is composed of kindness, gentleness, forbearance, and understanding, it is also composed of discipline, sometimes brutal honesty, and firm demands. This might be related to child rearing. It could be related to employment (the loving employer who expects responsibility and exacting effort from those whom he employs). When Jesus spoke his occasional harsh word, it wasn't an unfeeling demand to shape up or else, it was an urgent call to the long range benefits of his suffering by accepting the short range demands of the faith.
1. Love always has the element of sacrifice. The parent who insists his child do his work so he himself doesn't have to worry about it isn't being loving. The parent who insists because he wants the child to learn responsibility, even though it hurts a little to see him miss out on some fun activity is loving. Sacrifice takes place when we inconvenience ourselves for someone else. Leo Buscaglia told of being snowbound in O'Hare Airport in Chicago. For two days no plane went in or out. Some people were very uptight by the time that was over. But one middle-aged woman went to several harried looking young parents and said, "I've always wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. I'm going to start a kindergarten right here in the airport. I'll take as many children as I can, and you parents go get something to eat and get away by yourselves for a bit." That was love.
2. Love always has the element of discipline. I'm healthy today because a doctor friend of mine ran a test he didn't actually have to do for me because I had a stubborn health problem. It revealed that I had cancer. He sent me to the hospital where it was removed and the pathology report came back the other day saying I was clear. I'm okay. But I'm okay because that doctor broke his neck all through med school and afterwards in order to be, not just a loving doctor, but to be a good loving doctor.
3. Love always has the element of forgiveness. We all suffer mistreatment of one kind or another in this life. Sometimes it was intentional, sometimes it was not. Either way, some people hold a grudge. But true love doesn't allow that. If you wish to be a loving person, you must be a forgiving person.
4. Love always has the element of kindness. This will be the third or fourth time I've quoted Bishop Fulton Sheen in this book: "Love has three elements: kindness, kindness, and kindness." I watched a basketball game on television the other day. The score was tied, it was a tournament game, one team took the ball down the court, passed the ball around, then when time was about to run out one player stepped aside to take the last shot and the ball slipped out of his perspiring hands, out of bounds. This left the other team three or four seconds. They passed the ball in, threw it full court, an opposing player hit a last second basket. That boy's mistake cost his team the game. When the game ended, the boy walked to the sideline, and he looked like he could cry. The coach walked over, put an arm around that kid's shoulders, and whispered to him like a loving dad. In one of the roughest of sports, that coach showed the element of love: kindness.
ADDITIONAL ILLUSTRATIONS
Dave Barry points out that "death comes to all living things except crabgrass."
____________
Minnie Remembers
God
My hands are old.
I've never said that out loud before.
But they are.
I was so proud of them once.
They were soft,
Like velvet smoothness of a firm ripe peach.
Now the softness is like worn out sheets
Or withered leaves.
When did these slender, graceful hands
Become gnarled, shrunken?
They lie here in my lap;
Naked reminders of the rest of this old body
That has served me too well.
How long has it been since someone touched me?
Twenty years?
Twenty years I've been a widow,
Respected, smiled at,
But never touched.
Never held close to another body.
Never held so close and warm that loneliness was
Blotted out.
I remember how my mother used to hold me, God.
When I was hurt in spirit or flesh
She would gather me close
Stroke my silky hair and caress
My back with her warm hands.
Oh God, I'm so lonely!
I remember the first boy who ever kissed me.
We were both so new at that.
The taste of young lips and popcorn,
The feeling deep inside of mysteries to come.
I remember Hank and the babies.
How can I remember them but together?
Out of the fumbling, awkward attempts of new lovers
Came the babies.
And as they grew, so did our love.
And, God, Hank didn't seem to care if my body thickened
And faded a little.
He still loved it,
And touched it,
And we didn't mind if we were no longer "beautiful."
And the children hugged me a lot.
Oh God, I'm lonely!
Why didn't we raise the kids to be silly and affectionate?
As well as dignified and proper?
You see, they do their duty.
They drive up in their fine cars.
They come to my room and pay their respects.
They chatter brightly,
And reminisce.
But they don't touch me.
They call me "Mom" or "Grandma"
Never Minnie.
My mother called me Minnie.
And my friends.
Hank called me Minnie too.
But they're gone.
And so is Minnie.
Only Grandma is here.
And, God, she is lonely!
-- By Donna Swanson
____________
"The final test of religion is not religiousness, but love ... not what I have done, not what I have believed, not what I have achieved, but how I have discharged the common charities of life."
-- Henry Drummond
____________
Song from the late '60s:
I spent a day without a friend,
Though we sat together long.
We talked and talked and said a lot,
But still I was alone.
____________
Robert Ingersoll stood at the grave of his brother and said: "Life is a narrow veil between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive to look beyond their heights. We cry aloud and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. But hope sees a star, and in the night of death, listening love can hear the rustle of an angel's wing."
____________
Psalm Of The Day
Psalm 148 -- "Praise the Lord!"
Prayer Of The Day
Open my eyes that I might see the needs of those around me, O Lord. Arm me with kindness, that I might overcome my aggressive impulses and stop, instead, to help someone else. Grant me the serenity to relax my own sense of pressure, that I might in some way lessen the stress of another. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.
