Sunday, April 22, 2012

Better to Light One Candle...


I cringe and promptly delete forwarded e-mails that describe “the good old days” as peaches and creme and the current times as totally immoral and disastrous.   I can’t stand to hear self-proclaimed “preachers” who profuse that we are all wicked people on a slippery slope to damnation.   Who died and left them God?    

Now that I’m 67 years old and in the latter years of my life, I have little tolerance for doomsday prophecies.   My God is a God of Joy, my God is the God of the Resurrection.  My Lord is the Lord of the Dance.     I also believe in starting my eternity now.  I believe in bringing, to the best of my ability, light where there is darkness and hope where there is despair.   The older I get the more I attempt to surround myself with positive, loving people.   I am drawn to them like metal shavings are drawn to a powerful magnet.  Likewise, I find myself fleeing at once from negative people, negative talk, negative politics and negative religious beliefs.    It is not that I deny sadness or pain.  Actually, my ministry at church is assisting with funerals.  

Nonetheless I refuse to waste my time and fill my soul with unnecessary gloom, grief and pain.    I will not focus on nor internalize the emptiness in the glass when, in truth, the glass is half full.  I will do my best to light one candle here and there rather than curse the darkness.  And, I will continue to believe that God is the Light which knows no night, the Light which overcomes the darkness and fills the world with joy!