Genesis 18:1-10a
Proper 11 (16) Year C
There is a time for everything mourning the death of a child and the anticipation of a child a season of harvest and a season of planting. Whether a child or crop bears much or little, whether a child or crop elicits dread or hope there is the working out, through all the little details, of rejoicing or regret.
In the game of foreground/background, comparison/contrast, where we can measure one against the other and see things in the other’s light that would not otherwise be seen, even mixed metaphors have their place.
How do you hold the fragility of a particular harvest, short-lived summer-fruit so quick to spoil, alongside a beginning of generations, in all their persistence? Here, as we go about the election of people to an office of episcopacy, a part of the personnel question to be addressed has to do with whether, in the life of an individual, election will be the culmination of their career (harvested and already beginning to lose vitality) or the initiation of a generational influence (setting in motion new vitality in the faith gene pool).
How is life in your skin? Beyond the question of age, are you summer fruit or a sower of seed for a next generation?
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/july2004.html
Our behavior sensitizes us to more or fewer options. Our associations shape our involvement.
So when we participate in deceit we are less able to hear and respond to teachings and opportunities to practice honest dealings. In this way our behavior limits our reception of a word of health and healing and common-wealth. These are “words” of G*D that become, outside our usual avenues of reception, and often require dramatic conversions.
A famine of imagination of how we might have a better present and future than we do is as deadly as a famine of bread or a drought of water.
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let me bring you a little bread
let me under-weigh a little grainbetween these two
lie a chasm
requiring
amazing grace
to bridgelet me bring you a little bread
let me pile high a little more grain