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“The deaf hear…” “The blind see…”

December 3, 2021

Psalm 27:1-6, 17-18 | Isaiah 29:17-24 | Matthew 9:27-31

I turned 70 this past summer. And I’m still trying to wrap my mind around this reality. I find myself worrying about my memory. What did I have for dinner two or three nights ago? What was I looking for & why did I walk into THIS room looking for it? And I worry about the times I get lost in Cranston (because that’s where I mostly get lost!). I might be a little too focused on my memory (or lack thereof) because there are 3 previous generations of women in my family with Alzheimer’s. 

A New York Times online article by Lindsay Crouse got me to thinking. The article, “You Can Make Any Day the Best Day of the Year” appeared on the First Sunday of Advent. Coincidence? Maybe…Or, maybe not…Lindsay Crouse says when she was in her late 20’s she would spend New Year’s Eve with her friends. And every year she would ask them to describe their best days of the year gone by…“The times when we had the most fun, felt the most grateful or were happiest. Sometimes they were the days we expected. Parties, vacations, weddings. But more often, the real best days in hindsight weren’t the obvious ones. They were marked by the ordinary: a long conversation with a friend when I realized I wasn’t the only one who felt the way I did…Staggering home with a Christmas tree so big, it barely fit in the door…The problem with these best days was they went by without me realizing how special they were. Unmarked by ceremony & undocumented for posterity, they streamed together in my mind as a blur. I wondered, could I find a way to know when the best days were coming & really feel them as they happened? So I tried declaring a best day in advance…Designating a regular night as a best night helped me claim that moment… Now that I was looking for them, I caught them before they became memories.”

The readings appointed for today are interesting to me. Again, coincidence? (Nah. Probably not.) Psalm 27 starts out: “The LORD is my light & my salvation; whom then shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” Maybe my memory isn’t what I need to be worried about…Maybe I need to practice being more fully present. More fully present to myself…More fully present to THIS moment, in THIS space. Instead of being distracted by the fear & anxiety of “what if.” In the reading from Isaiah, these are the words that speak to me: “On that day the deaf shall hear…the eyes of the blind shall see.” And in the reading from Matthew, Jesus heals two blind guys. “The deaf shall hear…The blind shall see…” FOCUS. BE HERE NOW. PRACTICE BEING FULLY PRESENT. You know, I don’t really believe in coincidences. I believe in God’s fingerprints.

Pam Gregory