Friday Thoughts

Friday Thoughts : Remember

Every now and then I get down on the every day things in my life, students in my classroom, players slacking off on the tennis team, my own regrets, sins and worries, and eventually even faith and God. The whole cycle of life, repetitiveness of each day can get so wearing.

It always helps me, at these times, to remember who God is. To remember that God is defined by taking bad situations and turning them to the good. Or at least as much as our choices will allow God to. It helps me to remember that God is a renewer, bringing new life out of dying situations. That this brings God much joy.

Here is a quote that I absolutely love, that reminds my of the "freshness" of God, God's perpetual youth, and how God never tires from creating beauty and pushing things towards excellence.

"The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children. When they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy, a child kicks his legs through excess, not absence of life, because children have abounding vitality because they are in spirit fierce and free. Therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say 'do it again!'...and the grownup person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grownup people are not strong enough to exalt in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exalt in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning 'do it again!' to the sun, and every evening, 'do it again!' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisy's alike - it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy - for we have sinned and grown old, and our father is younger than we."

from G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy"

May we remember this appetite of God's, and find ourselves renewed within our own monotany. Amen.