Our house is coming apart at the seams. Literally.
This thought occurred to me a few hours after the siding crew descended on our abode a day or two ago … and began removing the various and sundry materials that had been shielding us from the elements for the past 30+ years.
I have to admit: It’s a bit disconcerting to look out the window and see trim pieces flapping in the breeze. Erstwhile housing armor…reduced to rubble.
Perhaps my visceral reaction to this current project is tied to my reliance on assurances made when we had the place built in the early 1990s. “Maintenance-free siding” they said to me … and I ate it up.
No promise could have appealed more to my 1990s Self as we prepared to move into our fourth family home. Having spent many an hour maintaining the exteriors of our previous domiciles, I was delighted at the prospect of acquiring Modern Siding Technology that would never-ever require scraping or painting or caulking.
I’d be free! Freed forever…from the drudgery of tasks I barely had the skills (or frankly, the inclination) to handle.
Guess I shoulda read the fine print. The promises made then didn’t really say “forever.” More like “25 years” if I recall correctly. So in fact, we’re already well into Bonus Time for those once seemingly miraculous materials, now headed to a landfill.
And I have an opportunity to ponder my reliance on worldly warranties and assurances. They all tend to wind up flapping forlornly in the breeze, don’t they?
Ironically, on this final Sunday of the liturgical year, we are invited to celebrate a different sort of promise – in the person of Christ the King. We encounter Jesus on the brink of destruction, standing before Pilate. And Jesus says he’s come into the world for this reason alone: “to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
As I look out my window today, I see unsettling evidence of how the things of this world inevitably pass away. But gazing into my heart, I am invited to embrace a different sort of truth. Christ the King speaks, and I am filled with wonder. I begin to see the wisdom in what the prophet Daniel sees, the confident warranty he makes to the people of God: “His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, his kingship shall not be destroyed.”
The more I think about this promise, the easier it is to recognize the comfort it has offered holy people in every age – especially when everything around appeared to be coming apart at the seams. Surely, we can find strength in this forever promise, the eternal truth we proclaim:
To Christ the King – the Alpha and Omega – be glory and power forever and ever. Amen!
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 