Grateful

Today, from the place I'm writing this, I can see blue skies--and the air is balmy for October. The breeze is noticeable but unarmed, a sort of shadow of its future winter self. This is one of those days when it seems one could live forever. Yet, Facebook is jammed with tributes to Steve Jobs, who died today from pancreatic cancer, and tributes to Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, civil rights pioneer, who also went home to glory today.

It's days like this that we are reminded how babies can be born in the midst of war and disaster and how billows of smoke and missiles of death  can mar a clear blue September morning. Life springs up where you least expect it and, at the same time, death can take us in the twinkling of an eye, while we were most assuredly making other plans. Very, very few people have their date of death on their appointment calendar as it turns out.

As a pastor, I am often present at the moments of transition--I have seen the grace-soaked shining face of a new mother as she holds a new baby, fresh from God's factory, birthed into this world from some other place. I have held the hands of those who were laboring to be birthed from this world into the next...both occasions for tears and sweat and blood and grace.

I have been to hospital rooms to celebrate miracles and to sit with innocent sufferers, and I have had the surreal experience of going from those serious matters of life and death to coming back to the church to a parishioner that's upset about the color of carpet or the typeface on the bulletin. I'm not bitter and I don't blame them--it's just enough to make a pastor laugh out loud, so much of it. I have had a front row seat on some marriages that have made me grateful for my own beyond measure, and ones that have inspired me to be more loving and forgiving. It is the perfect mix of joy and sorrow and it keeps me in touch with my LORD as no other "day job" could do.

Today, in fact, was not all pondering our mortality. This morning I played with soap bubbles and 4 year old children, and this afternoon, I was treated to a spread of amazing food by our child care center teachers and administration. Eating chicken wings and meatballs and salad and cake, it occurs to me that their appreciation is hard to receive, because I am the one that is grateful. I'm grateful, like Rev. Shuttlesworth, to be called to be a drum major for Christ, and I'm grateful, like Steve Jobs, to have found my passion in life.

In fact, in this, my second "Clergy Appreciation Month" ever, I feel what I felt last year too. I feel grateful. I feel overwhelmingly appreciat-IVE.

Life is shorter than it appears and how we spend this time matters. Are you grateful? Are you doing what you love? Are you fully present for the people who have your heart? If this was in fact your last day of living, would you be glad to be doing what you are doing today? Do the people you love know you love them?

When my time comes, I hope it is far enough down the road for my grandchildren to have laughed at my jokes. I hope it's far enough off to make it woefully impractical for Eric to remarry. I hope I have a GREAT preacher for the service who has the good sense to make me proud from the Great Beyond. I hope my children will know how much I loved them and that love is stronger than death. And I hope the whole world knows how very grateful I am, for every sermon I got to preach, for every hug and kiss, for every beloved friend, for every tear and heartache and the whole lovely, beautiful, complicated thing. And, child care center, I'm grateful for the chicken, and the meatballs and the cake, too. But you didn't have to. Really. I'm appreciative enough for all of us.