h2odevos encores 031012 Sand

"From a raindrop to a river

From one word into a song

Source of all gifts, 
Friend and Forgiver

Bring us together, to pass it on"

Pass It On by Peter Mayer & Patricia O'Reilly

Sometimes when I am talking or teaching about liturgy, the topic of "call and response" comes up. So, I say, "I'm going to say a few words, and you respond with what you know comes next." It often goes something like:

"As the sand of the hour glass..."

(response) "So go the Days of our Lives."

For daytime television viewers those words come from the program by the name, The Days of Our Lives.  There is a book called Sirach that is included in the Roman Catholic canon of Scripture, but referred to by Protestants as being from the "Apocrypha."  It has the following saying in it,

"Like a drop of water from the sea and a grain of sand,

  so are a few years among the days of eternity." Sirach 18:10

Tonight or early Sunday morning at 2AM many of us turn our clocks ahead 60 minutes (Spring forward/Fall back). There just might be a sermon or two in that refrain. Time, or at least how we measure it into years, months, days, hours, seconds and nanoseconds, flies by. Most people I come in contact with state that one of their "issues" is they simply don't have enough time. In one way that suggests other people have more time than some people. Perhaps that is true, but maybe it isn't. A related "issue" is time management. Do we mange time, or does it have its way with us?

 

The photo on this page was taken in the Wadi Rum area of Jordan. This particular picture is just a little itty-bitty sample of acres and acres of reddish pink sand. Particles and particles of sand for as far as the eye can see.

The Psalmist sang,

"How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!

      How vast is the sum of them!

18I try to count them - they are more than the sand;

      I come to the end - I am still with you." (Psalm 139:17-18)

Peter reminds us that raindrops come together to make rivers.  And words congregate into songs. I suppose the challenge or more appropriately the call and response for us today is to imagine what happens when you and me, WE get together to form community.

Spring Forward my friends,

rtg