Daily Leason for June 10, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is from Ecclesiastes 8 verses 14 and 15:

14 There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. 15 And I commend joy, for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.

There is a mystery to life that is perplexing and sometimes even infuriating. Yet it is a mystery we must come to terms with.  The mystery is this: Life ain't fair.

There is a primordial memory in all of us of a time and place called Eden when things worked like they should. The ground produced of itself, good things happened to good people and no child or enterprise was ever still-born.  We remember that time and that place and we long for it.  But we do not live there; life is about coming to terms with the fact that we do not live there. 

The time and place we live will inevitably break both our backs and also our hearts.  In this time and this place bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, and trees just don't grow like they used to.  We have to accept these things as our reality, lest we end up being crushed by disappointment and loss.  It is not so much that we have to cease longing for Eden - we will never cease longing; but while longing for that Edenic time and place we had, we must also learn to live in the time and place that we had.

The word I am looking for here is Joy.  Joy is the art of living in the with the mystery and burdens of our own time, place and heartbreaks - and really living.  Joy is a sun that still shines by day and a moon that governs the night.  It is food on the plate and a bottle of Malbec on the table.  It is friendship and laughter and a wholehearted man who after a long and frustratingly disappointing day falls down on the floor - not to keel over and die, but to wrestle with his boys.  Joy is as Joy does.  Joy is the life of the divine living in us here and now - yes, even here and even now.  And as Jesus said even though facing the mystery of his own disappointment and death, "Nothing can take away our joy."

Not if we don't let it anyway . . .