{"id":7358,"date":"2021-12-26T09:30:44","date_gmt":"2021-12-25T23:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=7358"},"modified":"2021-12-26T09:30:45","modified_gmt":"2021-12-25T23:30:45","slug":"before-we-shatter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/before-we-shatter\/","title":{"rendered":"Before We Shatter"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Before We Shatter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Bethany Kaldas<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u2018Come now, you who say, \u201cToday or tomorrow\u00a0we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit\u201d;\u00a014\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>whereas you do not know what\u00a0will happen\u00a0tomorrow. For what\u00a0is your life?\u00a0It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>James 4:13-14<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This\nyear especially, I think we\u2019ve all been reawakened to the unwelcome realisation\nthat life is fragile. I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only one who knows someone who lost\na friend or family member during this time, or at the very least felt the fear\nof losing someone you loved as they succumbed to illness or injury. You may\neven have experienced this yourself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our\nlives are delicate things\u2014glass contraptions that rely on so much going right\nto function properly. Not only physically, but how we live our lives is subject\nto dramatic changes that are quite outside our sphere of control. What once\nwere thought to be stable structures in our lives\u2014simple things we never even\nreally thought about previously\u2014broke down into chaos and uncertainty.\nSuddenly, and quite unhappily, the familiar was shattered and we were left with\nbroken pieces and no clue how to stick them back together again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\nlast couple of years of plague and lockdown may have felt alien to us when they\nhit, but uncertainty has always been something that underlies our lives. Every\ntime you\u2019ve driven to work, you could\u2019ve crashed. Every time you\u2019ve slept in\nyour bed, you could\u2019ve been robbed. Every time you ate, it could\u2019ve been\ninfected. And even apart from all these external factors, you can never be sure\nthere isn\u2019t some nasty factor lying dormant in your genes or in your cells to\ntake you out without warning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life\nis fragile, and the end is not always heralded by trumpets. So what do we do in\nthe face of this uncertainty, the realisation that we have far less control\nover our own destinies than we may have thought? What do we do when we realise\nthat our lives are made of glass?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Don\u2019t give your heart over to grief;\u00a0stay away from it,\u00a0remembering your own end<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>Wisdom of Sirach 38:20<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These\nmoments of realisation are not the time to be crippled by fear or sorrow. They\nare calls to action. Calls to live as best we can with what we are given. And\nliving as best you can means to try your hardest to be the person God made you\nto be\u2014to instil virtue in your heart and remove sin from your soul\u2014but it also\nmeans focusing on what matters, and letting go of what doesn\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do not give your heart to grief<\/em>, says the son of Sirach. That\ndoes not mean we don\u2019t engage with grief at all. Loss is real, it must be dealt\nwith. Prior to this verse, he also says that you should grieve for the\nappropriate amount of time\u2014and this may be a long time indeed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>C. S. Lewis, \u2018A Grief Observed\u2019<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The\npain may never fully go away. But you can\u2019t let it consume your life. Express\nyour grief, your anger, your bitterness\u2014but don\u2019t become them. Life is too\nshort for that. Use your loss as a reminder that everyone has an end and the\ntime you have now is precious. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are\nconstantly waiting to be less busy to do the things that matter. But that time\nmay never come. Don\u2019t wait to do the things that are important. Don\u2019t wait to\ndo the things that make you happy. Don\u2019t wait to see old friends you haven\u2019t\nspent time with in ages. Don\u2019t wait to spend time with your family. Don\u2019t wait\nto see the places you\u2019ve always wanted to. Don\u2019t wait to forgive. Don\u2019t wait to\nmake amends, or say the words that have gone unspoken for far too long already.\nAnd don\u2019t wait to tell the people in your life how much they mean to you, how\nbeautiful they are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dear\nfriend of mine once told me of a saying she heard: \u2018Give your friends their\nflowers while they\u2019re here\u2019. You don\u2019t have to wait for a birthday, wedding or\neulogy to tell someone they are loved. You may not get the chance. Everyone has\ntheir end. Including you. Including them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018See then that you walk\u00a0circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,\u00a016\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>redeeming the time,\u00a0because the days are evil<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>Ephesians 5:15-16<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Our\nlives may be glass\u2014we could shatter tomorrow. But if you let His light shine\nthrough today, the beauty that comes could last an eternity.  It is only here and now that we can start to\nbecome what we are meant to be forever\u2014and see that wonder in those around us. The\ntime to do and say what matters is now. You may not get a tomorrow. Today is\nyour chance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time, which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.\u2019<\/em><\/p>C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before We Shatter By Bethany Kaldas \u2018Come now, you who say, \u201cToday or tomorrow\u00a0we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit\u201d;\u00a014\u00a0whereas you do not know what\u00a0will happen\u00a0tomorrow. For what\u00a0is your life?\u00a0It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then … Continue reading “Before We Shatter”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7361,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7358\/revisions\/7361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}