Daily Worship

Backing

Jock Stein May 13, 2017 0 1

Galatians 6:2

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spiritshould restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. 2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 If anyone thinks they are something when they are not, they deceive themselves. 4 Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, 5 for each one should carry their own load. 6 Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.

Bags of it, what-you-call-it,

Falling like flakes of grey sleet,

Falling like bombs in a mindless screen game,

Falling like slurry slipping off a big black bing,

dragging at my ankles, reaching to my knees,

holding me back, pushing me on, breathless

and burdened with the weight of yesterday,

and the dark, so stark promise of tomorrow

on my back again, my feet

stuck fast in hags of it below.

 

Two backs can bear a sack, or can resist

attack too strong for only one, the Preacher

said. A three-cord rope is hard to break.

 

Together in it, call it all-of-us,

Working in every kind of weather,

Working at a human pace, serving the needs

of one another, listening, showing due respect,

working the different angles, building triangles

of partnership and providence, quadrilaterals

of hope, robust with humour and the rumour

of angels somewhere. That’s the real game,

and its daily challenge, whether

we’ll choose to make it all-of-us.

 

 

Pray

O Master, make me not so much to be consoled, as to console;

Not so much to be loved, as to love;

Not so much to be understood, as to understand;

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in self-forgetfulness that we find;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

It is in dying that we find eternal life. Amen.