Of Learning and Lasting and Living

He who notices the falling sparrow, also notices me, and makes meaning of naught.

You can only do well what you spend time with, and then only if it connects with spirit, calling, native instinct, talent. Try to do everything that strikes your fancy and life becomes like the frayed end of a rope: too many pieces, all short, none much use. Frustrating, not satisfying.

I rather dislike this summation. Like all generalities it bears exception, though it seems true on the whole. But I thought of it as I read Mark Spragg's account of the ranch farrier shoeing a horse. What I know of horseshoes is not worth telling, and I quite literally don't know the first thing about putting one on a horse's foot. I could stubbornly learn, sure enough, but without coaching it would be a long ordeal.

Shot through all of this is the longing to do what matters, and will matter. And in this the mystery of time bears in. There is never time to see for yourself the outcome, good or ill, of all the seeds planted in your life. And the fruit we do see we either hopefully construe as good, perhaps more than justified; or we cast it as regrettable and worse, also no doubt more-so than common mercy would allow. And of course there is the endless terrain of what can seem meaningless, of no account either way.

And then we talk about it, as I do now, and very few, ever, anywhere, will read it. Or if they do, imagining it had interest to a distant relative who read for sheer affection or duty to heritage, it would be years or lifetimes after the writer is seen only on a tombstone, if at all.

This is not somber or morbid. It is plain life. Youth cannot handle it: nothing terrified me more as a young man than the possibility of my own death. Old age, on the other hand, had better handle it for it is the reality. And if there is nothing beyond, well, nothing can be done about it.

Yet, I believe, and I hope in Christ who said.... Well, you know. He dared to believe His Father, our Heavenly Father, was redeeming the world and would make all things new. And so He did, and is doing. And with joy I hope for that endless day, ever learning, slow upon slowness, the daily tasks of life: healing of the heart, renewed day by day, knowing the One who holds my life will see to it that “all the ways of goodness are not stopped.”

So I live another day, a gift from God, with this reminder: "I never know how thought or word: action, random though it seems, within God's vast compendium has weight and import." He who notices the falling sparrow, also notices me, and makes meaning of naught. This is Alleluia.

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