“Come, Love! Sing On! Let me hear you sing this song – sing for joy and laugh, for I the creator am truly subject to all creatures." Mechtild of Magdeburg
The other day I set about replacing the power antenna on my car with a new unit. The original mast had been snapped off and it seems I can’t do anything lately without getting sliced and diced by anything sharper than a gummy bear. My blood may be O-Negative, but it is positively attracted to anything sharp, especially jagged metals.
I peeled back the carpeting in the trunk and managed to find and remove the two bolts that held the original antenna in place; it all disassembled and came out neatly enough and, I’m delighted to report, without my shedding any blood (yet). The new device isn’t exactly like what I had removed, so I fiddled with it a little bit to see how it would fit, made the wire connections and, before mounting it, decided to test it to make sure I’d wired it correctly.
I turned on the car’s power supply, then turned on the radio and – Voila! – the power mast extended … and extended … and within seconds the mast and gear-cable exited the housing! Oops. It turns out the antenna should have been mounted to keep the mast from leaving home. Now THAT would have been a helpful bit of information to include in the instructions, don’t you think?
Warning, do not test the unit without mounting it first!
Life is like that. Not everything comes with warning labels and, while the antenna snafu may be a bit irksome, it isn’t the end of the world. It was assembled by someone somewhere. What one person can do, another can do. I decided not to tackle the re-assembly at that moment because, to be honest, I was fighting allergies, exhausted from all my coughing and sneezing, blowing through reams of facial tissue, and somewhat brain-dead from the antihistamines that seem to stop up gray matter more effectively than yellowish-green matter.
Fortunately, I learned a long time ago not to take things too seriously. None of us is getting out of here alive, so take time to smell the proverbial roses. Life without joy, song, and playfulness is dullishly incomplete.
Even God plays. The Bible tells us God created Leviathan (a whale or sea monster) “for the sport of it.” Amazing; God plays. God wallowed in the mud one day playing patty-cake with the angels and next thing you know, God created Adam, and then had a rib-tickling idea to create a playmate. Oh, I know you sticklers for the scriptures will say the word is “helpmate,” but the focus of the passage is “goodness” – and for that, God created a woman precisely for goodness’ sake. The purpose of Sabbath (the day of rest) is also for re-creation. God did not make the gift of Sabbath solely to stop our labor, but to promote our well-being and happiness.
Since we were created in God’s image, it seems to follow that we need to play, too – and sing, and dance, and hop, skip, and jump!
There are, to be sure, times for grieving. The past few columns have touched on matters of grief, anger, frustration, death, destruction, wars, and violence. They are certainly constants in our lives, but it seems that if that’s all we look at, that’s all we will ever see, and I’ll be darned if I am going to let the stupidity of dunderheads and transmissibility of viruses get the better of me.
There is a wonderful church song called The Lord of the Dance. I am not one given easily to cry, but the dam always bursts open when I get to this point in the song: “They buried my body / And they thought I'd gone, /But I am the Dance, / And I still go on …” (© Bardis Music)
Life is wonderful, despite the woes we see. Greater is the One we do not see! Music, joy, dance, and fellowship enrich our lives. I may find myself spending two years before the (antenna) mast; it may never ever retract, but it’ll never let that get me down here in this, our valley. Dance on!
Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)
No comments:
Post a Comment