Embrace the Moment for what it is - September 17

Today’s Readings: AM Psalm [70], 71; PM Psalm 74; Job 28:1-28; Acts 16:25-40; John 12:27-36a

I spend a lot of time helping people prepare for marriage.  Planning for a wedding is certainly a stressful time in many people’s lives and that was before the pandemic.  We use the time of stress to talk about life and expectations and setting new norms.  It can be a wonderful chance to reestablish norms and relationships with family members in a way that the couple would like and not the way it has always been.  I hear often, “Oh things will be so much better when we can just get to the other side of this!” 

And maybe there is a smidgen of truth to that premise, but there is also something natural and seductive in looking beyond where we are. We want to see possibility and hope when we can get beyond where we are.  How many of us are waiting for this pandemic to be “over?” Or if I can just get beyond this “one” event, my life will be so much easier and better.   Which we all know is rarely the case.

Paul and Silas are in prison in the story from Acts.  They have caused a little ruckus in town in Western Asia Minor.  Men in the town had been making money of a mystic fortune teller and Paul and Silas have messed up the money-making scheme.  They are beaten and thrown in prison.  I would imagine they would be pretty eager to leave where they are and be ready to get on with their work. 

In the middle of the night, an earthquake comes, and the prison foundation is shaken.  Paul and Silas’s chains become unfastened and the doors are left wide open.  When the jailer wakes, he rushes in terrified that the prisoners have escaped.  Oddly, Paul and Silas are sitting right there.  They have not rushed to freedom but remained in the prison.  In the prison, they have a conversation with the jailer, and he and his family are baptized. 

I find it intriguing that Paul and Silas are not in a rush to escape.  I know I would have been long gone before the sun was up.  Get me out of this mess!  But Paul stays seeing an opportunity to change the life of the guard.  And then he and Silas go on their way, but first they embrace the moment for what it is.  How can we, when we want to get past a moment, learn to see opportunity in the present and not be so focused on what is next?

-       John+

 Questions for Self-Reflection:  Have you had times in your life you were eager to get through?  What parts of those times do you now miss?  What did you learn from those moments?

 Daily Challenge:  Try to figure out who is the jailer to you in this story.