1.29.23 "Finding Our Way!" Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

 Micah 6.1-8; 1 Corinthians 1.26-31

I’ve never been lost … in a mountain wilderness, or at sea … cast adrift in a lifeboat, or whatever …

There was a time in northern Michigan, a friend and I went hunting for morel mushrooms … he went one way, and I the other, and for a time, I was lost in the forest … not quite sure which way to turn for the road and our car, nor did I have a clue as to where my friend was.

Several years ago, D and I were traveling in Southern France, and in the city of Arles, we had a hotel reservation, and some directions … with google, we got close, but ended up going literally in circles … we were “this close,” and couldn’t find our way … even asking some locals for help, who provided us with suggestions, but language-differences made it difficult at best.

We parked the car, I called the hotel, and learned that the street we needed to be on was on the other side of the area where we had now parked our car … so, we started all over again … retracing our way, and finally came to the right road, blocked by a pylon … and when we called back to the hotel, the lady at the desk pushed a button, and, presto, the pylon went down into the roadway … we drove on and arrived at our hotel.

There have been times when I’ve been emotionally lost … having spent my all … too tired to go any further … coming to a point when nothing had a point … nothing had purpose … faith seemed a waste of time, and God? … maybe a figment of my imagination, or the imagination of the world.

A part of living is being lost now and then … something changes, things get turned upside down, bad things happen, friends disappoint, relationships crumble, life falls apart … worst of all, when we disappoint ourselves … when we make really bad decisions … when we quite blaming others, and find the fault to be ours.

We’re all lost now and then … 

We’re human beings … with an incredible capacity to screw up … hurt others, make crummy choices … follow the map when the map is upside down, and somehow or other we know it’s upside down, but we’re too stubborn to flip the map.

Finding our way?

A hiker might have a compass, maybe a map … we have google, we have Amazon … we have friends who stand by us, family to help us … here in this place, we have the deep traditions of faith, hope, and love …

We have a “sacred” text … a source of light and hope for millions who have opened its pages to read of God’s creation, God’s covenant with a people called Israel, the gift of Christ, God’s Lamb, who takes on the sins of the world, to chart a new course, Paul the Apostle to the nations, and that wild and wooly book of Revelation.

Myself, personally, I have found the text from Micah to be vital to my own story … vital to the welfare of the church … 

Micah asks the right questions - what do we have to bring to life to make life good? How much effort will it take? What kinds of sacrifice? How much will it cost?

Micah’s questions are the questions of ambition … whatever the ambition might be - a material ambition … a spiritual ambition … the ambition of power … the ambition of hurt and hate, to get even with others … the ambition to love, the ambition to build a better world.

What must I do to gain my place in the world? And what should that place look like?

The world never runs out of advice … every ad touches the ambition-button in our lives - fame, fortune, happiness … winning the lottery … being cozy and comfortable … eternally youthful skin, endless energy, chiseled abs - getting your child into Yale or Harvard, how to ace the tests … the latest in styles, … a new car with all the gizmos and gadgets we could want.

What will win the day? 

Micah goes through the usual list - expensive and dramatic things … burnt offerings, calves a year old, thousands of rams, rivers of oil … even my firstborn? … a hint of what human beings are willing to pay for ambition.

The Prophet Micah goes to the heart of the matter … his counsel, his advice, his word: move away from the self; move toward the needs of the world … celebrate the love of God, affirm creation’s diversity, engage the world in deeds of love and kindness.

A justice-love … to see the needs of another and never rest until those needs are met … 

Micah says to each of us: God has made clear what’s needed … God has made clear what is good … God has made clear what is right … do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God.

Paul the Apostle invites us to consider our calling …  in other words, put on our thinking caps … give some thought to who we are, and how we live … do some soul-searching - to find our greatness, and our sin … to know our power to love, and our power to be small-minded and selfish … our ability to love God, and our ability to be be hateful … yes, the whole kit and caboodle … know who we are, in the light of Christ, and by the light of Christ, find our true selves.

Paul writes to the church in Corinth … a church troubled by ambition …

Spiritual ambition of the worst kind - to be better than others … those with money flaunted their wealth to the embarrassment of those who had less … those with spiritual gifts used those gifts to elevate their own sense of importance and power. The Corinthian Church was a mess.

Paul shifts the center of gravity - reminds the Corinthians that God has chosen them, given them everything … no one becomes a Christian on their own volition - people can join the church, but becoming a Christian is the work of the Holy Spirit … every spiritual gift, given by the Holy Spirit, for the sake of the church, for the world, and everyone in it.

Finding our way?

We have Micah’s words in one hand, Paul’s counsel in the other, and Christ in the center … we have a roadmap … a plan, a method, a blueprint - to keep our ambitions aligned with the kingdom of God … our life purpose focused in Christ … our hopes and dreams, real and godly … the years of our lives, thoughtful, balanced, and wise …  

Finding our way? … indeed!

To God be the glory. Amen and Amen!

1.22.23 "Another Way Home" - Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

 Isaiah 9.1-4; Matthew 2.1-12

We’re in the season of Epiphany … a season of discovery … represented by the Wise Men of the East … who traveled long, who traveled far, watching the night sky for a sign … 

They came to Bethlehem to lay down their gifts … warned by an angel of Herod’s true intent, they return home by another road … when Herod finds out, he’s mad as hell, and lays waste to the little town and all of it’s children.

What else is new? 

Herod’s rage … despotic rulers, those who imagine they can control time and manage the universe with their ruthless and uncaring power - they stop at nothing; will do anything, to protect their power

Thank God:

There is always another way home, after we’ve been to Bethlehem.

I’m reminded of one my favorite Bible stories: Paul and Timothy head to Bithynia, but the story adds: the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them, so … they went down to Troas … 

During the night, in Troas, Paul had a vision: a man of Macedonia standing before him, pleading with Paul - Come to Macedonia to help us. 

Is there anyone here who hasn’t had their plans upset by the unexpected? 

The road ahead blocked … no way forward … stymied, stuck, stalled  … the poet says: the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray …

The Book of Proverbs says: The human mind plans the way, but the LORD directs the steps.

Proverbs puts it this way: Prepare your work outside, get everything ready for you in the field, and after that build your house.

In other words, first things first … 

Which is easier said than done … we are distracted by glittery things … something of small importance appears to be of great value.

Consumer specialists understand how this works … if it’s not one thing we want, then it’s another … and we need it now, or so we think … before we know it, what we wanted so badly, ends up in next summer’s garage sale … 

I’ve been there … the urge to get something at the spur of the moment … from QVC to ads on YouTube, and for me, the best book ever on theology … 

Buy it now; it’s so easy - “one-click” shopping - our phones, our computers, linked to our credit cards … boom … just like that, a click away, it’s on its way, delivered tomorrow, at our doorstep.

First things first … I don’t know how to make that work clearly … nor how to say it well … but the words of Scripture prove worthy:

Do not worry, says Jesus, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ … your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first for the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Part of what we’re doing here, in person, via YouTube, we’re working to have good priorities.

Again, the words of Jesus: Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

We are creatures who make plans … we forecast the future … hold a wet finger in the wind to see which way it’s blowing.

We’re the bowler arcing the ball down for that perfect strike … we’re fly fishing for rainbow trout, and we read the river … we fall in love and dream in technicolor …

But it won’t always work … we know that!

The best laid plans are sometimes thwarted …

The Wise Men were nearly undone by Herod’s evil …

Life, with all of its twists and turns …

Illness pays us an unexpected visit … the loss of a job, the turn of an economy; a pandemic … the relentless march time … circumstances of our own undoing, and sometimes our undoing by circumstances out of our hands.

The suffering in Ukraine … other parts of the world … hopes and dreams smashed, reduced to burned ruble, in the ruins of war … unimaginable heartache and loss … and what a price the children pay.

In the face of such loss, I don’t know what I would do, what I would think, how I would react.

Would I still trust in God?

“Trust in God!” … we say!

Easy to do when the sun shines, and the roof ain’t leaking.  

But harder to do when things fall apart … 

When death is in the air.

When loss overwhelms us.

There is always another way home …  

Over the years, I’ve been privileged to hear stories … folks make it … love finds a way  … healing, hope, a new day … as with Paul - if not Bithynia, there’s always Troas … if Herod stands in the way, there’s another way home.

God provides … God provides for Jesus in the wilderness, after 40 days of harrowing deprivation … 

The Wise Men were given another way home … 

Paul was given Troas.

Hope abounds …

But hope needs reality … 

and reality can be utterly daunting:

Not everyone finds their way out … 

Not everyone escapes …

The horrors of war, the cruelties of history can win the day.

Little Anne Frank dies in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. And what did she do to deserve that?

A journalist gunned down in Ukraine.

The sun is no longer shining … only clouds and gloom.

 

Despair fills our souls … fear and trembling at every turn of the hour … faith grasps for meaning … and sometimes faith curls up and dies.

But it’s the consensus of the ages - God proves faithful, even in the midst of hell - the Creed puts it well, if not strangely, he descended into hell - there to break the final power, and establish the kingdom of light … to forge another way home for a whole lot of people who need “another way.”

God’s faithfulness extends far and beyond the boundaries of time … we belong to God, in life and in death … in body and in soul … forever, and a day.

There is always another way home … a route, a path, a highway … a river, a road, a trail … in time, and in eternity, forever and a day … because God is love, and we are loved unto life.

We will get there … and to God be the glory. Amen

1.15.23 "You're Sitting In My Pew!" Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena

 Isaiah 49.1-7; John 1.29-42

Her name was Peg.

A member of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church, Livonia, MI … every Sunday, there she was, in her pew … 

One Sunday, Nick and Patty attended …  

They found a place to sit, and settled in; when an elderly lady came up to them and said, “You’ll have to move; you’re in my pew.”

Well, they moved, and lived to laugh about it … it was Peg who told them to move … it was her pew, and that was that.

Studies have been done on how we find our pew … by the third or fourth visit, we’ve claimed our space … those who study the brain suggest that we’re constantly trying to simplify life - so when we attend church, there’s at least one decision we don’t have to make - we have our pew, and that’s where we sit … unless someone else comes along, and they don’t know who’s pew it is.

Which reminds me: in days of yore, families owned a pew … a name plate affixed … this was how churches funded their budgets - people paid annually for their pew … the closer the pew to the pulpit, the more a family paid … sort of like seats at Dodger Stadium behind home plate. And, if one couldn’t afford a pew, well, there were always the free seats in back of the church. 

Who’s pew are you sitting in this morning?

We sit where gladness sat.

We sit where sadness sat.

We sit where joy and happiness snuggled one another.

Where greed and hypocrisy smiled smugly at the world.

Where faith, hope, and love grew strong.

Where heartache and anger were healed.

The best and the brightest.

The scoundrel and the crook.

The saint and the sinner.

The saved and the lost.

The lost and the found.

Here is where they all gathered to hear the word of Christ.

The word of grace.

The story of God!

Where are you sitting this morning?

Those worshipping in their homes - much the same idea - who owned the home before you arrived? Who rented the condo, the apartment you now call home? Maybe you built the home, but in times past, who lived on the land? Who came before us? Who will be here when we’re gone?

Every pew here has its own story … if only they could talk, eh? 

The school teacher who loved her children and gave them windows on the world … 

The real estate agent who refused to show a home to a family of color … 

The families who stood firm for integration and believed in the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The auto mechanic who loved old cars and the smell of grease, with walls of hanging tools and drawers full of spare parts … 

The architect who put dreams on paper, to create a home for a family … 

The factory worker who joined the union and learned how to bargain for fair wages and real benefits … 

The young man out of work, looking for a job … 

The struggling couple yelling at each other in the car on their way to church, hearts broken for dreams now lost … 

Each with their own story … and, yes, their faith …  faith well-formed for some, and hardly-formed for others … 

Yes, we’re sitting in someone’s pew … 

For the time being, it’s our pew; it’s where we sit … 

In time, others will sit in our pew. 

Life is like that … a script nicely laid out … on Thursday, we do the laundry, on Saturday, we mow the law, on Sunday, we go to church … pattern … purpose … priorities … promises and prayers … we have our script … and then, time moves on.

As it must, as it will … our pew will go on the market - with a nice ad - “Lovely pew, good view, well-taken care of … waiting for you to take ownership.”

One Sunday morning, someone will walk in - they’ll find a pew, and maybe make it their own …

To be the church of Jesus Christ … to care for God’s earth … to love one another as best we can … to shed the light of faith upon the human journey.

To take up the mandate of the Creator to those created in God’s image. 

You and I were created in God’s image, to be up close and personal with creation … to care for it in ways that promote its wellbeing and its future.

In times past, humanity’s interaction with creation was hardly noticeable … we plowed the earth, dug our water wells, but to little or no defacement of the earth; no permanent harm … the earth gave us what we needed … 

And, then, the industrial age … and we know the rest of the story … 

Extraction and exploitation … the earth suffering, war on a scale previously unimaginable … a few grew rich on the sweat and labor of the many.

The drive for profits and power … smoke and steel rising, better living through chemistry … pesticides and fertilizers, plastics and hazardous waste … 

And here we are … 2023 … challenges that exceed whatever personal responsibilities we might have - conserve water, recycle our waste, be mindful of what we eat, drive an EV … all of that and more … it’s the “more” that challenges us beyond the personal disciplines of mindful living.

What we need is good government, good politicians, who will tell us the truth and work for the common good … who will marshal the resources of private and government interests to seek the common good … who will reach for the best in the human journey, rather than pander to the worst.

Dr. King said: "Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?' "

We need CEOs and stock holders who go for more than the bottom line, but reach for the stars … young people who go to college and graduate with degrees in “mindfulness and character-development,” who refuse to sell their souls to the highest bidder, and yes, we need to get rid of the college-debt cash cow, which enriches a few and burdens the many … 

We need leaders who will challenge the insanity of a consumer culture, a culture of consumption, a culture trapped in the idea that more is better, when less is better, by far … leaders who will continue to raise the alarm with the growing patterns of anti-semitism, homophobia, racism …

Where are the people we need? 

The politicians, the CEOs and MBAs … Where are they?

May God raise a new generation of leaders who can see the goodness of life, and life’s purpose, who defend it with all their worth - not for personal gain, but for the welfare of all God’s creatures, great and small.

Here we are today … sitting in someone’s pew, keeping it warm and up-to-date for those who’ll be here tomorrow. 

What we pray for, how we vote, the things we value … it all counts - our faith in Christ - it’s all important. The world needs people of faith.

God Bless you on this weekend in honor or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. … and to God be the glory. Amen!

1.8.23 "The Adventure" - Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena, CA

 Isaiah 42.1-9; Matthew 3.13-17

Off we go into the wild blue yonder,

Climbing high into the sun …

So the Eggebeens would sing at the start of a family vacation … everyone piled into the car, seatbelts fastened, ready to go …

And then we’d play a Willie Nelson song:

On the road again

Just can't wait to get on the road again

The life I love is making music with my friends

Off we go … to see something of God’s grand and glorious world, to see old friends, visit family, take some time off from work and school … a splendid adventure.

I think of the conversation between Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins at the beginning of The Hobbit:

Gandalf: I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.

Bilbo: I should think so—in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can’t think what anybody sees in them….

Gandalf: You’ll have a tale or two to tell when you come back. 

Bilbo: You can promise that I’ll come back?

Gandalf: No. And if you do, you will not be the same.

There is much to life that meets the eye … and even more that doesn’t … 

Things hidden … things mysterious and wonderful … things strange and odd and fearful and fascinating, even dangerous … 

The mysteries of life … birth and death … gain and loss … joy and sorrow … laughter and lament … these are the realities of life … the clock ticks and the clock tocks … things come and things go … we live and we love, and we do the best we can, and sometimes, with clear intent, we don’t.

These are the realities …

Part of what it means to follow Christ is to deal with our realities … to live in the reality of world, the world of time and hope, disappointment and grief.

This is the only world in which we can live, and to live in this world, consciously, thoughtfully, is to live with God …

Our consumer culture is on a mission, however.

Our consumer culture prefers us not to think too deeply … but to get out there and buy a few things … and stay in debt.

Frederick Buechner says:

To journey for the sake of saving our own lives is little by little to cease to live in any sense that really matters, even to ourselves, because it is only by journeying for the world's sake - even when the world bores and sickens and scares you half to death - that little by little we start to come alive." 

William Barclay wrote: There are two great days in a person’s life—the day we are born and the day we discover why.

When we think deeply, we’re praying … prayer is nothing less, and nothing more, than thinking deeply: who am I? where am going? what do I value? … and God? God is always woven into the those kinds of questions … probe, push, ponder … sooner or later we end up on the boundary of the infinite.

Prayer is deep thinking … wondering … stepping back for a moment or two to look at the big picture … or at least as big as we can take it in … 

Infants and children take it all in … When a child is born, all the windows are open … everything pours in like an avalanche … but in time, the brain begins to sort things out, and windows begin to close. 

A person couldn’t spend a lifetime with all the windows open; there’d be too much of everything. So we sort things out, close a few windows, most of the windows actually, maybe too many.

When we engage in prayer, when we try to take in the big picture, we have to pry open some of the windows, windows long shut and painted over … the paint has to be chipped away … with a little hammering and some screwdriver work, we soon have an open window.

In the ancient language of faith, it’s called conversion … windows of the soul opened to the love and wonder of God … the mind changes … the soul grows larger, in sense and sensibility … 

This was the experience of the Apostle Paul on the Damascus Road … a bright light blinded him … this man who thought he could see everything, quickly realized that he could see nothing … he was spiritually blind … he believed in God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind … but he had it all wrong … 

History is full of such stories - zealous and pious people get it wrong … time and again.  

Some of the most dangerous people I’ve ever known have been the fully-convinced … the “true believers,” as Eric Hoffer calls them … 

Dangerous, because they have small minds … the windows of the soul have been slammed shut and painted over by dogma and creed … they become people of small sympathies and harsh judgments. 

As Hoffer notes: Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

The Damascus Road for Paul - he came face-to-face face with his spiritual blindness … this man, with the keenest of minds, had to learn that he had it wrong … he had to start all over again.  

Amazing grace how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now I'm found

Was blind but now I see

Jesus comes to be one with us … to heal the wounds and bind up the broken hearted … to recast the vision of life … to help us pray, pray deeply, to live in the deeps rather than the shallows … to be less driven by consumerism, and more devoted to the things of God … less about getting, more about giving.

Jesus comes to us with an adventure: to engage in the great ideas and works of justice and peace … to plunge into the world … to be one with God, in God’s purpose … one with others, in their dreams and their sorrows … to follow Christ where’er he lead.

Gandalf was looking for someone to share an adventure … at first, Bilbo wanted nothing to do with it … he wanted only to stay in his burrow … but in time, the allure of Gandalf won the day, and off went Mr. Baggins on the adventure of a lifetime …

And so it is for us … even now, here, in this place and time, Christ is looking for someone to share an adventure … like Mr. Baggins, we want to stay in our burrow, close the windows, bar the door … 

But our soul cries out and begs us to go … there is so much more to life than meets the eye …  

Here I am LORD … here. I. am!

Hallelujah and Amen!

1.1.23 "A Twist of Time" - Westminster Presbyterian Church, Pasadena

Numbers 6.22-27; Galatians 4.4-7

Time is a funny thing … and by funny, I don’t mean chuckle-funny, but odd-funny … strange and mystifying funny … weird, unnerving, impossible-to-define, kind of funny …

Time … when we’re children, we have all of it … it’s ours, to have and to hold, forever … the clock never runs down, the calendar always has another page, the rising of the sun is a constant … again and again … and once again … so it is, when we’re children. 

Time drags, when we’re children … Christmas never arrives … the 16th birthday never gets here … on a trip, we ask, “Are we there, yet?” … and Mom or Dad, slightly exasperated by it all, say, “Soon, every soon … just another hour or two” … and we flop back in our seat, and groan in our own little puddle, of a child’s indignant weariness.

Time, for a child, is a cheap commodity … not that a child disregards time … not at all … children know the miracles of time … time is never wasted for a child … all of time is time well-spent - every toy, a tool … every game, work at play … every friend, an experiment in social arrangements and emotional testing … to learn limits and boundaries … with a temper tantrum now and then … just to see how that works out … because life is a vast experiment, and children are really good at it … because they have the time to play with time, to see how it works.

And, then, one day, in our late 20s, or early 30s, we hear a tick,  and then a tock … we cock our ears and, like dog, twist our head a bit, trying a little harder to hear whatever it is we’re hearing … that little tick, a little tock … and then a few more … 

Nothing much to concern us … a strange sound to our ears, and we begin to think of things that have never occurred to us in the daily rounds of school and romance and job and dreams … that one day, it will end … we scratch our heads and we stare, for a few moments, into some unknown light, far ahead of us.

Well, here we are, at the turn of a calendar page, the turn of a year, a twist of time … 

In times past, it was all about the seasons … when to plow and when to plant, when to harvest …  

Sundials and obelisks - shadow clocks  … in the Bible, first watch and second watch, and so on … the monasteries kept track of time with the seven offices - matins and lauds, vespers and compline … for ships sailing the seven seas, hour glasses and mechanical devices.

With the industrial age, a new kind of time … the day shift, the night shift, the graveyard shift … days on, days off … sick days and vacation.

Time … a twist of time … and then one day, we look back at a past considerably longer than our future … the endless days of youth evolve into a hastening rush of days, and then months, and then years, roaring on by … and we wonder where all the time has gone … 

The children grow up and leave home … and return home … and then leave again … and we get older … we wonder what it’s all about - who are we? … where did we come from? … where are going? … does life have meaning, other than what I make it to be? 

We have questions … sometimes peaceful about it all.

Time takes our hand and says, “Come and follow me,” and we have little choice in the matter … 

Time has its way with us … and we don’t even ask anymore, “Are we there yet?” … we’re not sure where “there” is, and we’re not sure how we’re getting there … and maybe we don’t even want to get there … 

But it’s God who whispers consolingly to us, “Just a few more hours. We’ll be there soon.”

Maybe there’s been enough love sewn into the warp and woof of life’s fabric … maybe enough laughter … enough success … enough travel …

I know, for a lot of folks, pleasures and joyful moments are few and far between … or maybe not all … 

But if we’ve been fortunate enough, we might be able to count our blessings, at least a few of them, and name them, one-by-one, as the hymn puts it … 

To make our resolutions anew … which is something we do when the calendar turns - we look at time, and give it significance … which is a good thing to do … sure, it’s a children’s game … the turning of the clock … time is time … so we give it names … 

The old year is running out of the house to wherever it goes … and the new year comes our way, knocking on the door, and it all seems fresh and kind and hopeful to us … and we resolve to do better … 

Nothing wrong with our resolutions … if, for no other reason, we can chuckle about them a few months from now, as one more effort among so many to quit smoking, lose some weight, read that book we bought two years ago, fix the hinge on the bedroom closet door, see the dentist, and check on some old friends, too long ignored, not because we wanted to ignore them, but time just got away from us.

Maybe we put off for another day what might be done today … the one good thing about putting off for tomorrow what should be done today is that when tomorrow comes, we’ll always have something to do … 

A twist of time … the end of a cycle, the end of a year … a twist of time, and the future unfolds … life goes on … Christ is born … there is love to be given, and love to be received … books to read, and books that’ll never be read, but that’s ok, we’ve given them shelter in our homes, on a coffee table in the living room, or on a shelf in a study … 

A twist of time .. a tick, a tock …  “What time is it? we ask … rubbing our eyes like a sleepy child, at the end of the day … or bouncing out of bed, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on a fine Christmas morning. 

What time is it? we ask … 

May all of us find the time to love and be loved; to forgive and be forgiven, to even start over on a few things … or let some things slip away, because they’re not worth keeping … may the time we have be mostly well-spent … but then, time-wasted is ok, too. 

We can’t always be ever-wise and oh-so-thoughtful … we are what we are … and we hope to do a little better, and we will, and sometimes we won’t.

What time is it?

Let’s see what the day holds for us … a tick, a tock, a twist in time … a star above, some angels in the field, a Creator’s promise: Let there light.

Amen and Amen!