“And God looked at everything God had created and said that it was good.”
It came as shocking news to me when a friend from across the room said, “Soon hot dog packages will be marked with the same warning as cigarettes.” Their names “rolled” off my tongue like honey: Oscar Meyer, Ball Park, Jesse Jones. My friendship with hot dogs is longstanding. Onions, mustard, chili, and, forgive me, ketchup. I have loved them foot-long and bun length. Even the conundrum of 10 dogs and 8 buns has not daunted me. To hear that they are as filled with carcinogens as cigarettes shocks me and points me again to the human condition.
Just after Creation, following the rest that the Lord called good, there was the next day, the eighth day that humankind is still living. This eighth day is described in the second Creation story of the Garden and the actions of Eve and Adam. The problem started when we could not be satisfied with Paradise. We want knowledge; we want things to have, things to keep for ourselves.
Preservation, the keeping of stuff, be it houses or hot dogs, fruits and vegetables, or even life itself, is a major enterprise of the human condition. We want watermelons in December, taunt muscles and skin at 65. The talk of dying becomes food for fear-mongers. And hot dogs that last perennially will be our demise.
The temporal nature of matter, be it vegetable, animal, mineral, is part and parcel to the mystery and wonder of life. The temporal nature of matter clearly sets the otherness of Eternal Divinity. And the lesson of such knowledge is that God is God, and we are not God. Working to keep all things forever young and fresh, no matter how we have to go about doing it, will turn and bite us someday.
God, who invites us to the daily-ness of manna and the everlasting-ness of the Living Bread we know in Jesus the Christ surely tires in our folly. Mortal life passes away. Each day holds different blessing. Joy cannot be held in squeezed fists. Life is to be lived in the marveling of each moment with attention, intention, and gratitude from cover to cover. God invites us poor chronos mortals into kairos life, life that knows eternity and trusts God’s forever-ness and steadfast love. Read again John 6 and dwell in the promises there.
Blessings upon you.
Pastor Lib aka Rev it up
