Storm Front Coming

"Suddenly all is good cheer. Whatever troubled him is gone now...All gone. This is a feature of his outlook I have not expected. He can forget and be happy - a real strength. A good meal is waiting somewhere. A TV game. A beer. Clear sailing beyond the squall-line of life. It isn't so bad, when you don't think of it." -from Richard Ford's The Sportswriter

There are few things sadder to me than our attempts to ignore what confuses us, makes us anxious, what we don't understand, what we fear. Whether it is death or God or the future or consequence, whatever we might not want to think about or face; it is made all the worse by our unwillingness to face it. And, worse than that, the way we "amuse ourselves to death" in the hopes that whatever it is that's out there might just go away. But ignoring the squall doesn't bring clear sailing, it just increases your chances of drowning when it comes. Certainly, we can go the other extreme and fret about futures we cannot control, but that doesn't excuse our trying to fill every moment with another distraction. Good for us if we can live in the moments we're given and enjoy every sandwich, but pity us if we redefine ourselves from moment to moment, filling up the seconds with meaningless whims, with whatever shiny thing captures our attention at that small space in time. Let's instead choose to do the hard work of being thoughtful in all its forms, developing the character that steadies us for rougher storms ahead.

" Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ."