Sit still

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, July 20, 2025

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Sit still

The Lord appeared to Abraham by the terebinth of Mamre, as he sat in the entrance of his tent while the day was growing hot.

I notice lately how my enneagram 7 curiosity seems insatiable. In just twenty-four hours I find myself researching the geology of the ancient Middle East, poring over Jewish history since Moses, reading about pre-WWI politics and culture along with various fictions and essays by and about Flannery O’Connor, soaking up the Open golf tournament and Scottie Scheffler’s family history, exploring a Boston museum’s stolen art with my friend visiting the museum, tracking with FlightRadar24 Andi’s family flight from Austin to Tokyo (they are over Alberta at the moment), and basking in the beauty of a late-afternoon green world just outside my window, wet from rain.

I think many of us are hungry to (I know I am) … if not BE the world, then absorb all we can of it. There’s that metaphor of a light bulb burning brighter just before it dies. I don’t feel death approaching, but I did identify with thoughts in this poem by Clarence Heller.

More or less

I didn’t notice until it was much too late

that I had taken residence in the old stage of life.

It didn’t ask my consent, stalking stealthy as a lion.

It came unremorseful, unrelenting, unforgiving, unyielding.

Feelings of resentment, loss and distain

fill the place where energy used to flow.

I crossed this threshold in a long amorphous moment,

perhaps more than a year,

my denial gave it room to take root and flourish.

Most surprising is that though I had witnessed this change in others,

the judgment that blamed them assured me that my fate would be different.

Now I am painfully reminded that we are all more or less the same,

weak and strong,

vulnerable, dependent and interconnected,

human and divine,

ever in transition that we cannot control. – Clarence Heller

When the Lord visited Abraham he was nearly a hundred years old, but still spry. So was Sarah his wife, nearing 90. So too were his servants, who probably were pretty old themselves.

Abraham hastened into the tent and told Sarah,

“Quick, three measures of fine flour! Knead it and make rolls.”

He ran to the herd, picked out a tender, choice steer,

and gave it to a servant, who quickly prepared it.

Abraham and Sarah’s bodies were aging, but their minds and spirits matured. So much has happened in their lives and of course, much more was to come.

They asked Abraham, “Where is your wife Sarah?”

He replied, “There in the tent.”

One of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year,

and Sarah will then have a son.”

Can you see Sarah in your mind’s eye, listening around the corner of the tent flap, stifling a laugh? She’s ninety years old, long past menopause, and Abraham’s impotence has been a reality for all these many years. What on earth could they be talking about?

But all these “facts” of aging were beside the point of God’s covenant with Abraham, His long-ago promise of descendants as numerous as the stars in the night sky.

God’s timing is not our timing.

Another poem caught my attention, this one about the joy of interconnection and how oneness with God and others frees me from over-responsibility even while I stay engaged and aware of the world around me.

Daffodil

I don’t have to save, but I can attend.

To protect the tender ones,

heal the wounded, vindicate the gentle,

or to disturb or make righteous noise,

I am able, with what I have.

 

My despair (how the Emperor counts on it!)

wants me to believe I lack the power.

But what I am given is enough.

As among daffodils that brighten the hillside

in late spring snow or freezing rain,

miraculous powers are already granted.

 

Busy as Martha or still as Mary,

even the smallest butterfly-wing muscle

of compassion is all I am called to use.

 

No one knows the power of small acts

or stillness,

the millions holding the world together

by the thread of their prayers.

 

This world is not aching for superheroes,

but roadside daffodils. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes

God’s view of the world transcends mine every moment in my life. In spite of my hungry desire my spirit can touch just so much truth, goodness and beauty before I fall asleep, get hungry,  get bored, or die. But I can leap and laugh and praise God anyway, knowing how close He is … this God who made the world and everything in it … whose promises endure for a thousand generations … and whose love shows itself in daffodils, whispered endearments and occasional rides on the wings of eagles.

(Now, just to keep us abreast of the United Airlines plane carrying our kids, the map at the moment shows they have crossed over the corner of British Columbia into the Yukon. Soon they will be flying over Anchorage and out over the Bering Sea, across the international dateline, skirting Siberia and head southwest to Japan. As at sunrise every day, wherever they are, darkness will once again return to light.)

Blessed are they who have kept the word with a generous heart and yield a harvest through perseverance.

 (Genesis 18, Psalm 15, Colossians 1, Luke 8, Luke 10)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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