Once you reach your 60s (or so we hear . . .), the annual physical at the doctor’s office may include a memory test.
Spell “world” backward. Sure.
Subtract 7 from 100 until you get less than 50. Got it.
What day of the week is it? Uh oh.
In these pandemic times, it is in fact hard to remember what day it is, a phenomenon known as Blursday. The days run together because we have no change in context to mark one off from the other. Every day, it’s the same room, same routine, same computer screen. Every day, such similar conversations, questions, worries, wonderings.
And yet, even now — especially now — time needs to be marked off, measured, taken in, and taken up. If all time seems like “more of the same” time, we will struggle to act, to choose among opportunities and challenges in what is in truth an extraordinary time.
In his lovely poem “October,” Robert Frost asks time itself to slow down, to “make the day seem to us less brief.”
October – By Robert Frost
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
In the midst of an otherwise bleak chapter in Isaiah about the rebelliousness of the people of God, there is this gift in Isaiah 30, first verse 15:
For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
And again in verse 18:
Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you;
therefore God will rise up to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for God.
What do you as a church board need to slow down for this month — to truly wait for, as God waits for us?
What pressures keep you or your board from waiting?
What do you as a church board need to act faster on?
What is holding you back?
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