Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Life is fragile. That old cliche. It is fragile, but there is a steel thread that runs through all of life that makes for a tenuous continuity. Last night we received word that my cousin Cindy had died. Cindy has struggled with MS for the last 18 years but has lived an amazingly independent life. She was skilled - very skilled - in computer technology. She had just moved to Maryland and was thrilled with her new job. It seems that life yanks the rug out from under us whenever we are riding high. It's really not that way, but it sure seems as if it is. When an unexpected death hits like this, it leaves me unsettled and waiting for the other shoe to drop. It's times like this that I retire to my quilting room where I can enjoy the sanctuary of basking in creativity and watching old episodes of NCIS - where all of life is neatly wrapped up in a 45 minute episode. Where all the bad guys get theirs and the just are rewarded. Where things make sense and if they don't, you can leave them there and get on with life. Life hurts. Death hurts. But in between there is joy. Rest in peace, my dear cousin. Say hi to Grandmala and Grandpala, and give Mama a kiss for me.
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Word of the day:
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
Gospel
Jn 5:1-16

There was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.
In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled.
One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.
When Jesus saw him lying there
and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him,
"Do you want to be well?"
The sick man answered him,
"Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool
when the water is stirred up;
while I am on my way, someone else gets down there before me."
Jesus said to him, "Rise, take up your mat, and walk."
Immediately the man became well, took up his mat, and walked.

Now that day was a sabbath.
So the Jews said to the man who was cured,
"It is the sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to carry your mat."
He answered them, "The man who made me well told me,
'Take up your mat and walk.'"
They asked him,
"Who is the man who told you, 'Take it up and walk'?"
The man who was healed did not know who it was,
for Jesus had slipped away, since there was a crowd there.
After this Jesus found him in the temple area and said to him,
"Look, you are well; do not sin any more,
so that nothing worse may happen to you."
The man went and told the Jews
that Jesus was the one who had made him well.
Therefore, the Jews began to persecute Jesus
because he did this on a sabbath.


God bless our troops!


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