On Monday I posted my post on Facebook by quoting from the song “Smile” — “There’s always a reason to always choose joy.” Tuesday I wrote about my poem “Love anyway” and posted to Facebook, “There’s always a reason to always choose love.”
Now I realize there’s always a reason to choose all of the fruits of the Spirit — always choose peace, always choose patience, always choose kindness, and all the rest. That reason in the most selfish sense is that it’s good for us — if you live in joy, peace, gentleness, etc., you’re going to be healthier than if you wrap yourself in anger and fear and lash out at others.
But as the phrase implies, those traits are a natural product of living in the Spirit — they are the fruits of that life choice. When you’re with the Spirit, you can’t help but feel joy and love, and you are patient, and kind and gentle by nature.
Choose to live in the Spirit, and you are choosing all of the fruit. I have to say it’s a healthier way of life but often hard to maintain, especially as I scroll through social media and see all the hatred and distrust — but as I cling to the Spirit, the urge to respond in kind tends to melt away. There’s always a reason to always choose the Spirit.
Every moment of every day presents us with choices. At the end of the day, the answer to the inevitable question, “How was your day?” turns out to be a summary of the choices we made in those various given moments.
One June day eight years ago, I conjured a little poem about making those choices. I included it in my first (or third, depending on how you count) collection of blog posts, a little book called A Bridge at Crossroads: 101 Encouragements.
It’s not an especially great poem, but I think about it from time to time when I think about how we’re always making choices. I thought about it again yesterday, when I wrote about choosing joy and finding reasons to rejoice wherever we turn.
Love is the same way, because love is a choice in the same way joy can be chosen. The marriages that last are the ones where both parties have chosen to love each other, and for better or for worse. So, too, can an attitude of love be a choice in our interactions with one another. That’s what I was trying to say here.
Love anyway
When weariness overtakes you And your fuse is short, Love anyway.
When the slap of reality hurts So bad you want to lash back, Love anyway.
When the loss is so deep You can’t see straight, Love anyway.
When you’re tempted to quit And go running away forever, Love anyway.
And so we say goodbye to Standard Time for another eight months. According to our newly adjusted clocks, today’s sunrise comes an hour later than yesterday, and sunset will come an hour later, until after Halloween.
This is to avoid the spectacle, in our neck of the woods, of the sun rising shortly after 4 a.m. in June.
I actually wouldn’t mind that. I like sunshine in the morning more than I like sunsets after 9 p.m. But I’m a morning person, what do I know?
Whew, that was close! I almost let my fury explode Friday afternoon when I saw a news story that the president has asked the manufacturers of the highest-tech weaponry to quadruple their production. I was ready to rage about politicians who talk about peace and inevitably seem to make unholy alliances with the good old military-industrial complex.
Fortunately, my Friday exploration of Scripture just happened to have fallen onto a passage from Psalms, specifically Psalms 37:8:
“Stop being angry! Turn from your rage! Do not lose your temper — it only leads to harm.”
(New Living Translation)
Or, more conventionally:
“Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret — it leads only to evil.”
(New International Version)
I take from this that the word NIV translates as “fret” can also be translated as “lose your temper,” which enhances my understanding of the passage. On the other hand, “harm” and “evil” are not the same thing, and I wonder if the NLT is watering down the meaning.
The psalm begins (in my NIV), “Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of those who do wrong, for like the grass they will soon wither; like green plants they will soon die away. Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart …”
And so I’m not gong to fret, or lose my temper, because once again a political animal has disappointed me. There is more than enough rage in the world these days.
All that is in my power is to take a deep breath, remind myself that peace is an internal thing, and that if enough of us decide to stop raging, love God and love our neighbors, someday — perhaps not in the near future or even in my lifetime, but someday — there will be peace.
The comics page used to be an integral part of my day. It was the page I read first, and even if I didn’t have the time to read the rest of the newspaper, I would read the comics to see what the various characters and critters were up to today.
I would read every strip. I had my favorites, but I didn’t ignore the strips that did not consistently satisfy, because every one hit a mark at one time or another.
Then newspapers fell on hard times, and the page started shrinking — literally — and so did the comics as a result.
Once upon a time, comics could take up two or three pages in a daily newspaper. Each strip would stretch about two-thirds the width of the page, with the rest taken up by puzzles or single-panel cartoons. In a worst-case scenario, there would be a single comics page with two columns of comics top to bottom, which was still fine.
But then, to save money, the papers started shrinking the size of the pages. There are two basic newspaper sizes, broadsheet and tabloid. How much did they shrink? It’s not much of an exaggeration to say today’s broadsheet is only a little bigger than a 1960s tabloid.
At the same time, we all kept getting older. Even with my glasses, it’s harder and harder to read the fine print — or the tiny comics.
A long time ago, my local paper briefly carried a comic strip called “Luann” that I found charming. I was disappointed when they shook up the lineup and it disappeared.
In the early days of the World Wide Web, I discovered you could read “Luann” (and other comics) online. Over the years I added a strip or two — for example, I discovered Joe Staton, a favorite comic book artist, was doing “Dick Tracy,” and I still check in on the legendary detective years after Staton retired.
I still start my day with the comics. I open my laptop and visit nine different strips, a handful of blogs and news sites, and three word puzzles.
If I have the time, I’ll leaf through the daily paper, but I usually just glance at the comics page. I can’t read them comfortably at all anymore. The photo shows Thursday’s “Pearls Before Swine” in the paper and the laptop, for comparison.
I probably sound like a grumpy old man, but this makes me sad rather than angry. My earliest memories of newspapers involve sprawling on the living room floor reading the comics and the baseball box scores in the Newark Evening News.
The talk focused on Hebrews Chapter 11, where early on it was said, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
In other words, God spoke the universe into existence. He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, and so on.
I found myself thinking of us mere humans, whom it is said were created in God’s image. Since we were created in the image of The Creator, we also are creative beings in our limited way.
And so J.K. Rowling speaks the universe of Hogwarts and Harry Potter into existence, and Ray Bradbury creates life on Mars. We don’t have the power to build universes literally, but our imaginations were designed after the imagination that created the universe around us.
We appreciate the awesome creativity of the human imagination, but it’s useful to step back and appreciate the imagination that conceived us and the world we inhabit.
