Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

Sentinels waiting for the dawn

Friday, March 10, 2017

From Matthew 5
Jesus said to his disciples, "Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter into the Kingdom of heaven."

We are sitting in the director's office at one of our favorite retreat centers. Spiritual retreat centers are almost always subsidized by religious orders and organizations. Their members are gradually growing older. In this local case their average age is 84.

"What's that mean? In 10 or 15 years there will just be a handful of folks left," he said. In those same short years, whether or not they use religious lingo or even call God ... God, young people who crave stillness are going to appreciate retreat centers more and more.

Later I notice a headline about the 2020 election. "Can Millenials save the political process in America?" For the first time, baby-boomers will not comprise a majority of the U.S. electorate. Doesn't sound so bad to me.

In his own reflection on life, time, and impending death, young neurosurgeon Paul Kalanithi remembers Graham Greene's wistful comment, "For writers it is always said that the first twenty years of life contain the whole of experience - the rest is observation." And when you are sighting down on your Enneagram number, the authors of The Road Back to You suggest you remember how you lived when you were twenty. Your personality type is "never more florid or clear than in early adulthood."

I imagine our grandkids Jack, Aly and Miles getting just a little older and "becoming" themselves. Not keepers of the law so much as men and women who simply want to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God. This is the righteousness which opens the doors to the Kingdom of heaven. Jesus always says, "Let the little children come to me." But even in my dotage, maybe especially in my dotage, I can come. The ambitions of my false self are still flaming, but not so strong and not so high and not so bright.

In the lesser light, like a candle, I somehow see more clearly. Across the way, there is Jesus, smiling. Come.

Adobe's Photoshop Elements has a new feature, Lord. It can tweak a frown and make it smile. Oh, Lord Jesus, let that not be necessary on the young faces of men and women learning what it's like to reflect on their first twenty years. And give me wisdom to shut up and listen to ideas and idealisms that can make me smile, too, without the help of editors.

Devotions Archive

Sentinels waiting for the dawn

Friday, March 10, 2017