SUMMER 2009It is a day when I will be on the road all day: keeping various appointments I have made, ferrying Rob to places where he can put in applications for jobs, searching for a birthday present for a friend. It is a day that will be spent driving on wet pavements, rain drops slapping the windshield. So I grumble a bit, and, whenever I get out of the car, I pull my maroon sweatshirt over the top of my head to protect my hair from the dampness.
Yet, really, I am calm inside, despite my outward grumbling. I wonder, as I complain to Rob about the rain, why I do not go more completely with my inner calm, my inner acceptance of the changes of nature. And of life in general. I do trust that rain and sunshine follow each other, and that both are needed on the earth.
The swine flu is big news this week. The media is grumbling about that. And yet, actually, there have been very few deaths so far, very few diagnosed cases at all, and all really is still well in the world.
The Bible says that there is a time to plant and a time to harvest, a time to dance and a time to refrain from dancing, a time of birth and a time of death. And yet the love of God remains through all of this.
God, help me to feel your love through all of life’s moments: through rain and through sun, through health and through illness, through births and through deaths. And help me to reflect that love to others through all of my own changing moments: through joy and through sorrow, through hope and through despair, through wealth and through poverty, for as long as I shall live.
Sondra Ball
Clerk, Salem Quarterly MeetingRETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Last modified:
Saturday, May 30, 2009 at 08:35 PM
