Week of September 16 devotions

September 16 Sunday-Ps. 19 is justly celebrated. I love its mix of creation and the law/instruction of God. In our time, with our visual advances, Look at pictures from the Hubble telescope and see the heaven proclaim the handiwork of the Creator. What elements of Creation tend to give you a sense of the religious, the numinous? Monday-I often find it difficult to get back in the swing of things after vacation. Part of the trouble is that it takes me a while to wind down. Often I take a day back home to gather myself. Another response could be to be careful about enforcing daily mini-vacations to recharge, reflect, and to pray. So part of the issue is that my pattern gets disturbed, so I have to adjust to both its interference and then renewal. I am loath to say we take a vacation from the faith, but surely we all go through cycles of distancing and yearning for God. Tuesday-I contributed to two different people doing MS bike rides this month, one of whom is our Serene Stated Clerk. What a wonderful thing to give time, preparation, and such a store of energy to help raise money for people whose bodies have betrayed them. I admire it so when folks can figure out a way to do good (in this case money for research) by doing themselves a good turn (the value of exercise). It is a remarkable exercise of time and energy for a good cause. I love how that exemplifies how the physical can do important work for the healing of others and do soul work at the same time. Wednesday-Here’s quote from Macrina Wederkehr: “In our search for the holy, there are times when our restless preparations smother the very truth for which are searching. We decorate our rooms and make elaborate preparations for our prayer, when a single flower and a moment of waiting are all we need to meet the One Who Comes.” Thursday-One of the reasons I went to Yosemite was to recreate some views from the photographer Ansel Adams. I can’t recapture his deep focus shots, but I can walk some of the same areas and breathe deeply the remarkable artistic landscape of the Creator as Artist. The again, I can breathe deeply the air of creation wherever I am. Friday-A friend asked me recently, “why is happiness so elusive?” My response was that we pitch our aspirations too high, that we call happiness what will be left for heaven. I think of the book of Ecclesiastes where the writer takes the persona of Solomon as “been there, done that’ and finds happiness to be elusive in a big picture. Instead, he urges us to embrace happiness when it arrives, and that is often found in our more mundane everyday enjoyments. We would do well I think, to contemplate what we mean by happiness, as well as ways to achieve it. It may well be that it is an internal state, not one we can expect others to provide. Saturday-My main church history professor, James Moorhead, wrote a new history of Princeton Seminary for its 200th anniversary this year. He is very strong on noting how the seminary responded to or reacted against changes in the cultural and religious landscape of the country. It evokes so much respect from me to read of the great cloud of witnesses there who so lived to combine the seminary’s goal of combining learning and piety.