Weary or Wary?

Some days it is just harder to get started than others. Have you noticed this? It is usually a Monday that is tough. After the build up to Sunday, I crash (when possible) in the afternoon or evening and am not quite ready to get back to work on Monday. Martin Luther said preaching is like carrying a baby to full term, giving birth on Sunday and waking up pregnant on Monday morning! (I love what I do, never fear and I do take Tuesdays off and begin my week anew on Wednesday.)   Today is one of those days. I reserve time on several mornings for reading and writing. This morning I came across this, ​“We believe that spiritual action is the hardest of all – to praise and worship God, to thank God, to petition God for our brothers, and sisters, to repent of our sin and that of others. This is action, just as the taking of cities is action, as revolution is action, as the Corporal Works of Mercy are action. And just to lie in the sun and let God work on you is to be sitting in the light of the Sun of Justice, and the growth will be there, and joy will grow and spread from us to others. That is why I like to use so often the saying of St. Catherine of Siena: ‘All the Way to heaven is Heaven, because Jesus said I am the Way.’” ​Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement wrote the above. I wonder if she was having one of ‘these days’? If find her words encouraging in a way that lifts my weariness and eliminates my wariness. It is easy to get weary even when we are doing good work. We love our jobs, we find fulfillment in helping others, we know we are called to help the poor, homeless, and weak. But in all truth we get tired and it can make us wary of new requests for help. My ‘inbox’ is full of them.   ​Each day we make decisions of where to put our time, resources and money. We get wary of requests that bombard us asking for more. How do you decide where to help, how much to give, and what you will do?   This week the Outreach Idea Committee will wrestle with those choices and seek to discern how we will communicate our requests for participation in the Monthly Service Project. This month the Worship Team will meet and make plans worship. They will seek to engage you and those you invite, that you may be reinvigorated by the experience of coming to worship rather than feeling that it is just one more request on your time. Our Commissions; Witness, Stewards, Nurture, all do work that can be ‘weary’ yet rewarding IF people choose to participate in the education, worship, and service of the congregation. Still we realize that that the ‘work we continue’ is a request that enter our ‘wary’ minds for evaluation. How do you view your part of “Continuing the work of Jesus. . .peacefully, simply, together”? What choices will you make this month? I trust as we sit in “the light of the Sun of Justice” God will grant us growth and “joy will grow and spread from us to others.”​