2023-03-31 A Meditation on the Day’s Business
“We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” (Jn 9:4 ESV)
The love of the Father towards us is not some selfish boast but awakens us to say “Really?”. It teaches us to turn our inner self outwards. It encourages us to belong, to thrive, to celebrate. It is a fine day when we truly awaken to a heaven sent labor: there are only so many hours in the day, and to labor in those hours is to have answered some questions. A few things. Some points of interest. Some concepts. Some prayers.
What we need answered is that we cannot invent such a fine notion as to be loved: it is an agglomeration of actual experience, the steadfast One who is Holy, having the decisive state wherein we are His children. To be a son, to be a daughter, is not to grab and covet after the beloved estate, but is to open up and thrive. It is to work together in company. It is to serve and to fight and to pray. We can almost feel it on our own initiative, until doubts mean we start to sink into the storm swell. For, it is a fine day when our sins are no cause for doubt on His part. When we cannot “undecide” about things on His account. “[T]he gifts and the callings of God are irrevocable” (Ro 11:29).
To look heavenward and see the kind of emblem that doesn’t egg us on to proud deeds or selfish boasts, but makes us comforted in the inner being in ways too precious to account for, is to know God’s promise that He will descend with a shout (1 Th 4:16), and ask who He will find faithful (Lk 18:8). We are leaning on each other, the certainty that this one—like the Father, or like the Son—is unmovable, heals us and makes us into a happy cohort, a happy battalion, a happy servant crew. To serve is to earn something few people discover in life: the full-on and overwhelming place of heroism, to be leaned upon, to shoulder a unsavory burden, to build and to create and to comfort and to fight, studying the Scriptures and warming to this good use of those few hours in the day. Few hours of non-distraction. Few hours of happy camping. Few hours of getting down to the business of the day.