October 13, 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Psalm 90:1-12; Philippians 1:21-26; Matthew 6:25-34
We Lift Our Lives
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
We lift our lives.
Imagine there’s a bank that credits your personal account each morning with $86,400. However, it carries over no balance from day to day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course!
Each of us has such a bank. Its name is time. Every morning, it credits you 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off at a loss, whatever of this you failed to invest to a good purpose. It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no drawing against “tomorrow.” You can only live in the present on today’s deposits. *
Each day comes as a gift. Our life is a precious gift. This life comes to us from the creator who imagined us into being, who foresaw the number of our days.
At night we go to bed and close our eyes. We fall asleep. Luther called sleep “the little death.” And then in the morning, we open our eyes, and it’s a miracle, another day of this beautiful life! If sleeping is a little death, then awakening is a little resurrection. Each day is a miracle, given to us from above. The gift of our lives back to God is, perhaps, the most fundamental offering we can make.
Our readings today all focus on the gift of time: our lives and our days.
Psalm 90 is the one psalm attributed to Moses. It’s a meditation on time. Moses draws a distinction between our limited, earthly time and God’s unlimited, eternal time. Before there was a world, there was God. Moses put it this way, “From everlasting to everlasting you are God.” This means that, if we were to look back in time, everlasting in the past tense means that God’s yesterdays are without end. There is no “Day One.” And looking to the future, it’s everlasting in that direction, too. There will always be a new day, a new tomorrow.
Because of that, God’s take on time is quite different than ours. Moses supposes that a thousand of our years are like no more than a day from God’s point of view.
It’s like that old joke: A man once asked God “God, what’s a million years to you?” And God said, “To me, a million years is like a second.”
Then the man asked God, “So, what’s a million dollars to you?" God replied, “Oh, it’s like a penny to me.”
The man considered that, and then he asked, “God?” “Yes, my child.” “Would you give me a penny?” And God answered, “Sure, just a second.”
But our perspective on time changes, too. Like, for instance, it blows my mind to think that 1984 was 40 years ago! How did that happen? It sure doesn’t seem like 40 years.
As the number of our remaining days grows shorter, our perspective on time and its value changes. People with serious health conditions, especially if they have something terminal, they come to value the gift of time like never before. Time is the most precious commodity we’re given.
Moses prays, “So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a wise heart.”
“We lift our lives up to you, we are an offering.” All the days of our lives become a way we manifest our love and gratitude for God.
Linda Ellis wrote a poem called “The Dash.” It’s about the dash between the date of birth and date of death on our gravestones:
I read of a man who stood to speak at a funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning… to the end.
He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke of the following date with tears,
but said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years.
For that dash represents all the time they spent alive on earth
and now only those who loved them know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not, how much we own, the cars… the house… the cash.
What matters is how we lived and loved and how we spend our dash.
So think about this long and hard; are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left that still can be rearranged.
To be less quick to anger and show appreciation more
and love the people in our lives like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile…
remembering that this special dash might only last a little while.
So when your eulogy is being read, with your life’s actions to rehash,
would you be proud of the things they say about how you lived your dash?
We lift our lives up to you, we are an offering. This gift of life we’ve been given – it’s something that can only be lived in the moment, one day at a time.
In Jesus’ sermon on the mount, the gathered crowd sat on the hillside. They were surrounded by nature in all its glory. Jesus pointed to the birds and flowers. One can imagine some swallows wheeling overhead. “Hey, look at these birds,” Jesus says, “They don’t till the soil and gather up grain into silos. But their heavenly creator feeds them every single day.”
Then Jesus points to the colorful wildflowers growing on the hillside. “Take a look at these flowers. Look how beautiful they are! They don’t wear designer clothing. But I can tell you that not even King Solomon, in all his glory, was dressed as stunningly as these flowers.”
Worry is a thief. It robs us of joy. It takes away our sense of security. And when those commodities are taken from us, we aren’t able to live fully. The day becomes smaller, narrower. We trudge through our truncated existence, unable to fully engage in the gift of today. In our fears, we strive after many things, we seek here and there, looking for fulfillment, for security, validation.
Jesus calls us to trust in the one sure thing: the goodness of God. Each day comes with its own surprise. Truly, we don’t know what even the next hour will bring! But Jesus encourages us to step fully into our NOW with the understanding that we do so with the providence of God to see us through.
Mother Teresa voiced something very similar. She wisely said, “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”
Trusting in God’s ever-present goodness and care, we give our lives. Sturdied by that knowledge, we live fully in all that today will bring.
Finally, Paul wrote to his beloved church in Phillipi while under imprisonment. Paul stood face to face with the uncertainty of his future. Would he live? Would he be executed? He didn’t know. His future was in God’s hands. Not that it was ever anything otherwise! But within the walls of his jail cell, this reality was crushing down upon him.
He speaks about the prospects of life and death to the Philippians. And he comes to the conclusion: for me, living is Christ, and dying is gain. Either way, he says, he’s a winner! In life, with Christ, in death, with Christ. Christ is there in all his yesterdays, todays and tomorrows.
Paul said, “for me, to live is Christ.” What he means is that, in the days he’s given on this earth, his focus is Christ-centered. He aims to make his life an offering, dedicated to Christ.
Earlier we reflected on falling asleep and waking in the morning. When we do awaken, in that “little resurrection,” we come to consciousness in the new day. And maybe you’re like me, in that first moment of awareness, you say a little prayer. And it goes something like this: “God, thank you for this new day of life. It’s great to be alive! I don’t know what this day will bring, but you do. Whatever it may be, I’d like to live this day for you. Bless my comings and goings to your glory.”
Each day we awaken, it’s another day of life. But when the morning comes when we have no more tomorrows, then we will awaken, not into the little resurrection, but into Christ’s resurrection. And on that new day, we shall see and understand from God’s reality, from everlasting to everlasting.
We lift our lives up to you, we are an offering.
* from Marc Levy, If Only It Were True
