Sometimes you just have to get up and go. Enough talking. Enough speculating. Enough pontificating and reading and thinking and talk, talk, talk.
Get up and go. Do it. Get it done. Try something. Move the thing from here to there.
Jesus has been talking with his disciples for a few chapters now, unfound anywhere else in the gospels…except the next three chapters as well! This really is a long section of important teaching.
But in the midst of it, there’s this moving transition - Get up. We’re leaving this place.
In John, per usual, we’re not too clear where they were or where they would go. It seems it’s not so much about the time or place, than the call to move on.
There are times in life when you just have to move on. Enough of the past—step into the moment and walk into the future.
John 14:27-31
“Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you. I give to you not as the world gives. Don’t be troubled or afraid. You have heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away and returning to you.’ If you loved me, you would be happy that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than me. I have told you before it happens so that when it happens you will believe. I won’t say much more to you because this world’s ruler is coming. He has nothing on me. Rather, he comes so that the world will know that I love the Father and do just as the Father has commanded me. Get up. We’re leaving this place.
Psalm 90:12-17
Teach us to number our days so we can have a wise heart.
Come back to us, Lord! Please, quick! Have some compassion for your servants! Fill us full every morning with your faithful love so we can rejoice and celebrate our whole life long. Make us happy for the same amount of time that you afflicted us—for the same number of years that we saw only trouble. Let your acts be seen by your servants; let your glory be seen by their children. Let the kindness of the Lord our God be over us. Make the work of our hands last.
Make the work of our hands last!
Prayer1
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that you will make all things right if I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with you forever in the next.
Amen.
From Reinhold Niebuhr