Yesterday morning was largely spent blogging about drones and our failure to examine the wisdom of a policy of killing people termed enemies from afar. It was a computer morning, with lots of research at my fingertips.
The afternoon, by contrast, was person-to-person: dropping off some food and visiting with an older couple then visiting with a family saying good-bye to a beloved dear one in the end stage of life – a life too soon taken by the vagaries and injustice of cancer.
All politics may be local, but all grief is global – none escape it.
And what occurs to me in reflecting on my day spent amidst so much grief and pain is that life itself brings so much challenge, so many tears, that I wonder that we would add to the mix with our own contribution to the grief of self and others.
Before going to seminary, a preacher I know would often say to my many questions, “It’s not a salvation issue and God will take care of it.”
She frustrated the nonsense out of me at the time, but I have grown to new appreciation of that wisdom. So much I fret about resides in the hands of God. So often when I want to get something ‘right’, it’s about telling another that they’re wrong. So often when I want to ‘know’ for sure, what I really want is reassurance that in the court of public opinion, I am the winner. So often what I worry about doesn’t matter at all.
Sitting with the dying and their loved ones reminds me of that: most of what I sweat day-to-day really doesn’t matter at all. And God will take care. So what does God need of me? My helping hands, and, I suspect, not much else.
