Saturday, September 23, 2023  

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Today’s Scripture Reading 
James 4:13–5:6

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.

Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous one, who does not resist you. (NRSV)

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Reflection
“What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” — James 4:14b

As my great-grandmother was passing from this life to the next one, she began saying hello to friends and family members who had already died. It was as if she was being greeted by a heavenly host of witnesses and she was glad to see each and every one of them.

In this final moment of life she was experiencing a truth that eludes us most of the time — that at our very core, we are spiritual beings, we are spirits passing through this earthly realm. Our spirits may leave this world, but somehow they continue on to another place, a place many call heaven.

How do I know we are all spirits? Because hymn writers refer to the soul as a distinct being, a separate entity from ourselves. Henry Lyte wrote “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven.” Johann Franck wrote “Soul, Adorn Yourself with Gladness.” These hymn writers didn’t need to refer to the soul as a different person from ourselves but did so out of deep awareness.

How do I know we are all spirits? Every time I have a dream, my subconscious self is shattered by another reality, another time and place.

How do I know we are all spirits? Because the love I still feel for my great-grandmother and for every person dear to me that has passed away continues; that love has not faded and is so tangible, so real. The person is gone, yet the love remains. I believe that love is from the Spirit, from God.

“Die happily and look forward to taking up a new and better form. Like the sun, only when you set in the West can you rise in the East.” — Rumi

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Prayer
“Soul, adorn yourself with gladness; leave the gloomy haunts of sadness. Come into the daylight’s splendor; there with joy your praises render. Bless the one whose grace unbounded this amazing banquet founded; Christ, though heavenly high, and holy, deigns to dwell with you most lowly.” Amen.

(Prayer from the hymn “Soul, Adorn Yourself with Gladness” by Johann Franck)

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Written by John W. W. Sherer, Organist and Director of Worship

Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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