MORNING ANGER

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©

I don’t wake up angry and frustrated. That takes about ten minutes.

I’m usually up before daybreak. It’s cozy in the kitchen as I start the coffee and wash up the dishes from the night before, quietly, so as not to wake Helen. I muddle around, not quite awake enough to think. I hum some old hymn tunes, or popular songs from my youth, something about not having a date for the prom, not really thinking about the words, just enjoy the feel.

Then I think about some idiotic post I saw on Facebook, or remember an item from the newspaper or the TV news from the night before, or recall some long-dead politician who dug such a deep hole for the rest of us that we’re still trying to dig out… or what was said by some current politician who is too stupid to know that the first thing you do when you find yourself in a hole is to stop digging…

Those of us who don’t like violence, not the type we have to participate in—and make no mistake, there are plenty who do love violence, do love hurting others in person—still enjoy seeing our foes vanquished in logic and rhetoric. Or on the basketball floor.

Jesus had a lot to say about not worrying over things we can’t control. “Consider the lilies of the field…” “How many of you can add even a cubit…”

Jesus’ point wasn’t to drop out of life. When we really understand how to stop worrying about stuff we can’t control, we are freed up to work on stuff where we can have some influence. So stop worrying, be happy, and get to work.

JRMcF

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

My youthful ambition was to be a journalist, and write a column for a newspaper. So I think of this blog as an online column. I started it several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,” Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the sub-title, ”Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer!” [This phrase is explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] We no longer live in “the place of winter.” The grandchildren grew up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the life cycle, so I continue to work at understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ in winter…

I tweet as yooper1721.