It is LABOR DAY WEEKEND!!!
When I was young, this meant leaving our primitive family lake cottage where we had lived since school got out in June. I HATED saying good-bye to those carefree days of summer and facing the “work” of the school year!Contrast that thought with the upbeat challenge of these words, written in 1921 by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy (1883 -1929):
“Awake! Awake! — to LOVE and WORK — the lark is in the sky!
The fields are wet with diamond dew; the worlds awake to cry their blessings
on the Lord of life — as He goes meekly by….”
Whatever our means of earning a living may be, we are also all called to a different kind of “work” in our lives — the “work” which involves the ways that we LOVE .What does that work look like for YOU???
Poet Mary Oliver ( 1935-2019 ) put it this way in excerpts from her poem “ My Work Is Loving the World:”
“My work is in loving the world…
Let me keep my mind on what matters —
Which is my work — which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished…
Which is mostly rejoicing…
Which is gratitude…“
Studdert Kennedy invites us to “let the love of Jesus come and set thy soul ablaze!” Don’t you just LOVE that??! What is it that sets YOUR soul ablaze?
The third verse of the hymn is a mandate for all of us who call ourselves “Christian..."
“To give and give and GIVE AGAIN what God hath given thee!
To spend thyself, nor count the cost…
To serve right gloriously the God who give all worlds that are —
and all that are to be. “
So — as we begin a brand-new month and also a brand-new church year — I invite you to click on this link — to listen and to contemplate the question:
What “work” is going to be setting your soul “ablaze?”
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