Before the Days of Trouble Come

28Sep

Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come, and the years draw near when you will say, ‘I have no pleasure in them’; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return with the rain; on the day when the guards of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the women who grind cease working because they are few, and those who look through the windows see dimly; when the doors on the street are shut, and the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low; when one is afraid of heights, and terrors are in the road; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along* and desire fails; because all must go to their eternal home, and the mourners will go about the streets; before the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher is broken at the fountain, and the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the breath returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher; all is vanity. [“…all is Hevel (vapor, enigma)”]

Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:8

As I write, hurricane Helene is bearing down on the Florida Gulf Coast. The sure widespread disaster Helene will leave in her path prods a still-tender nerve of empathy in most New Orlenians. Nineteen years after Katrina devastated our city and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, the stories we still tell with full eyes and shaking voices are stories of the kindness and generosity America and the world showed toward our region. 

Four days after Katrina hit, I saw rescue and EMT teams from Sweden, Canada, Italy, and most states mustering on the LSU campus. They were preparing to enter our flooded, darkened city. The kindness of America continued unabated for the next two, plus years. I wish such generosity and compassion for all victims of disaster, not because it fixes broken stuff; but because compassion made into work fixes broken souls, souls that are lost to what is of ultimate importance: love between humankind and God, and obedience to God’s commandments. 

Ecclesiastes can read like a biblical ode to mid-life crisis if one does not pay attention to the opening clause of today’s selection. “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come…” Tempest, pestilence, the ravages of war, financial calamity, a sudden cancer diagnosis in a beloved; they all reveal the tangibles we acquire and worship as the vapor and enigma they are. The good news is there is immutable meaning to help us make sense of everything between the breath of birth and the certain return to the dust from which we came. That truth is the love of God and the call for us to live by God’s commandments, with love and compassion for one another. Beyond that, there is a lot of smoke and mirrors.

Musical Reflection

Within Our Darkest Night, Taize

Oh great and mysterious Savior, fan the flames of compassion you lit in my soul when you made me. Let me not treat human suffering as news or cinema or whispered gossip. Show me to the place where compassion is not a nice feeling but is touch. Amen. 
CompassionLoveTruth

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