Sufficient for the Day

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This world has an awful lot of troubles these days. As of mid-2010, the average American has about $44,000 in personal debt, including secured debt like mortgages. According to some sources, the average household in this country has about $8,000 in credit card debt. The US national debt, as of this past week, is over $14 trillion.

The Wisconsin legislature is in its second week of protests regarding the collective bargaining rights of state workers, and has recently passed the bill in the House. However, if the fourteen state senators hiding in Illinois do not return to work, the matter will stall in the Senate. If the matter is not settled, the governor has said that 1,500 state employees will be laid off by June. The national unemployment rate continues to hover over 9%, and, as of December 2010, the Iowa unemployment rate was 6.3%.

Bodies continue to be discovered in Christchurch, New Zealand, following the catastrophic earthquake there this past week. The death toll is rapidly approaching 100 there, and many more left injured and homeless. Protests in Libya are leading to deaths daily as people demonstrate against the government.

“Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” Sufficient for the day is its own troubles, but sometimes it feels like there is an overabundance all at once. It is difficult not to worry about tomorrow when there is so much of today's trouble that seems to send ripples into tomorrow and the next day and the next generation.

That You May Be Sons of Your Father

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” The world seems to operate this way much of the time. The scales of justice balance themselves. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. Tit for tat, toe to toe. If someone hurts you, hurt him back. If someone takes from you, take what is his. Round and round, over and over, the cycle keeps on going. Small children are expert at this sort of thinking. Just watch boys on a playground. If one slights another, he hits his opponent, who returns the punch, and pretty soon they are going blow-for-blow. And girls are no different, except maybe in their methods.

As adults, we are often not much different. We don't like to be slighted. We don't want to feel belittled or offended or put down or put out. We don't want to be insulted or abused or taken advantage of. We would rather put up walls of defense against those who hate us. We would rather cling tightly to what we have than risk losing something in service to our neighbor. We would rather lash out that take the lashes.

A Matter of Perspective

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The perennial question is: Is the glass half full or half empty? I recently saw a cartoon with four panels. The first two showed the same glass with the same amount of water. The first said, “the glass is half full”, and the second, “the glass is half empty”. In the third panel, the same water was filling a half-size glass, and the caption said, “the glass has been downsized”. The fourth panel showed a puddle on the table and the caption said, “the glass made a lateral move”. Is the glass half empty or half full? Of course, the answer itself is irrelevant, but the question serves to identify one's perspective. The optimist sees the glass as half full, that there is more to come. The pessimist sees the glass as half empty, that half the water has already been drunk, and what's gone is gone. The Buddhist might just say, “The glass is.” The post-modernist might say, “The glass has as much water as you think it does.” The Hindu might even say, “The glass is an illusion.” To a certain extent, it is all a matter of perspective.

The Law and Salt and Light

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Law of God is good and wise

And sets His will before our eyes,

Shows us the way of righteousness,

And dooms to death when we transgress.

How many times do parents hear that dreaded whine: “But Moooommmm!”, “But Daaaaad!” Why can't I have a cookie now? Oh, please... just this once? But Billy's mom lets him do it, so why can't I do it too? Children would often like their parents to relax the rules, just for a little bit, or just this once. And for the five-year-old screaming in the grocery store, many a parent has considered it, if not given in on account of embarrassment. I remember a children's book with a little boy who hated to take baths. Finally, his parents gave in and said that he did not have to take a bath anymore, which lasted for awhile, until a potato grew in the dirt caked in the boy's filthy hair. Then he begged to be bathed and cleaned up, and never protested bath time again.

"What Does the Lord Require of You?"

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sometimes it feels as though everyone is trying to take the fun out of life. That new sports car will do 0-60 in four seconds and top out at 120mph, but the state trooper is strategically stationed to make sure you get nowhere near that on the road. Desserts taste so much better with fresh cream, but the government says everything must be pasteurized and homogenized and sterilized and blasted beyond recognition, in the name of food safety. You savor the taste of sausages and rich soups and luscious desserts, but the doctor says that you have to cut back, cut out, cut down.

Sometimes it feels as though the Lord is trying to take away all your fun, too. You can't swear, can't sleep in on Sundays, can't join in the wild parties, can't do all kinds of stuff that looks like so much fun, at least on TV and online. The Lord does not allow you to say whatever you want to whomever you want. The Lord says you cannot keep all of your hard-earned money and possessions all to yourself. The Lord says that you have to respect the government and follow the laws of the land. The Lord says that you cannot believe whatever you want or worship whatever or whomever your heart desires. No man or woman, no bottle, no car, no child, no job is supposed to take the Lord's place in your heart. Kinda makes the Lord God sound like a big party-pooper. After all, why did God make all this fun stuff and tell us not to use it?