Category: Seven Quick Takes

Every Thanks­giv­ing it has been a rit­u­al in my fam­i­ly not to say a tra­di­tion­al prayer before the meal, but instead to have every­one at the table name one thing they are thank­ful for. There is far too much com­plain­ing. We live in chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic times, but for all of that we are the wealth­i­est and luck­i­est peo­ple in the his­to­ry of the world. What­ev­er chal­lenges we have faced, we have come around to the end of anoth­er year. God has sus­tained us, for He is the cre­ator and the sus­tain­er of all things. Keep in mind how He has sus­tained you.

I can tell that it has been some time since I’ve been to Ado­ra­tion. The rea­son I know this is because I am tired. I have lacked patience, which nor­mal­ly is one of my rare — exceed­ing­ly rare — virtues. I am out of tem­pera­ment, and morose. As water seeks its own lev­el, so my less fre­quent vis­its to the ado­ra­tion chapel can be gauged by my more fre­quent vis­its to the con­fes­sion­al. I can tell that I have not been to Ado­ra­tion because even the word “water” sounds dry. But I can­not han­dle myself, or my life, as in my male­ness I do oft imag­ine I can. I need Christ; I need to be with Christ.

Twit­ter has its uses, I guess. And note that by “I guess” I mean some­thing along the lines of: A wild and blind shot into an emp­ty field hop­ing that maybe a deer will show up at the last minute to be felled. I have found, in my ten months or so on Twit­ter, that I have used it main­ly for shar­ing arti­cles (includ­ing my own) or quo­ta­tions with a sting in the pith. But who ever learned any­thing from those bane­ful descrip­tions of movies in the TV sec­tion, of one sen­tence or a frag­ment? The descrip­tion of “For­rest Gump” might be “A retard­ed man from the fifties til today.”

I won­der whether it has ever struck any­one else that Job is so well-placed in the Old Tes­ta­ment. Tech­ni­cal­ly, it could have been placed any­where, but in the prov­i­dence of God it was placed imme­di­ate­ly before the Psalms. In the Psalms, to be sure, there are laments and cries to a God who seems absent or slow. But ulti­mate­ly they are songs of praise and thanks­giv­ing. So imme­di­ate­ly before the Psalms we read the ulti­mate nar­ra­tive of spir­i­tu­al dark­ness in Job. Job is the night; the Psalms are the day. Job is lament; the Psalms are praise. The books com­ple­ment each oth­er.