A Fast Day

'This is the kind of fast day I'm after: to break the chains of injustice, get rid of exploitation in the workplace, free the oppressed, cancel debts. What I'm interested in seeing you do is: sharing your food with the hungry, inviting the homeless poor into your homes, putting clothes on the shivering ill-clad, being available to your own families. Do this and the lights will turn on, and your lives will turn around at once. Your righteousness will pave your way. The God of glory will secure your passage. Then when you pray, God will answer. You'll call out for help and I'll say, 'Here I am.' -'If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people's sins, If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go. I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places--firm muscles, strong bones. You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.      Isaiah 58:9-12 MSG

As I sit here this beautiful morning, reading this portion of scripture, sipping hot cider, (it feels like fall here) as the sun pours in over my desk.  The birds are singing and the breeze drifting softly in.....I think how beautiful this world is.  No I am not overlooking the property we onced owned, but even so there is such beauty all around.  Yet, as I listen to the news and the what is going on around the world to say nothing of what is going on right outside our back doors....such ugliness. 

I was reminded and challenged as I read in Isaiah ....how much how we live......is becoming our very demise....our transportation habits, how we purchase, how we communicate,  what we eat, what we drink, the medications that are quickly perscribed to us, (fast medicine) and the ones so readily available to us, are negatively effecting us....even destroying us.....You can't miss it, just listen to the news, read health articles.....even facebook, everyone is talking about it, go green, go natural,  H1N1 will kill you but hey news flash so might the vaccine, Wear sunscreen the sun will kill you.....newsflash Vit D deficiancy is epidemic.  Get this new better cell phone ...reception everywhere...newsflash brain tumors connected with wireless use.....buy this new headset and protect your self.....to say nothing of the wireless 'whatevers' that are floating in the air everywhere.  I even read an article about 2nd hand exposure to wireless equipment and the threat to children!!! whether we are talking about how we eat or how we bring our children into this world and then how to protect them, or how we communicate and commute, Care for the needy, eldery, less priveledged......The result seems the same...we are destroying our own kind! 

 I couldn't help but think about how restless we are as human beings, always wanting more, quicker, cheaper, living faster, close to the wire, splitting ourselves into many pieces to attain what the world tells us success is.  In someways it is what we feel we need to do to survive in this fast paced, instant gratification generation.  but, in an odd twist we find that the very things that have brought us to this point...(out of the dark ages) are in many ways destroying us....to say nothing of the homelessness, abuse, neglect, abandonment and crime in our nation, most of which I am often too busy to see or do anything about..... save our whales? (not that it isn't important) but, how about save our babies? .Care for the elderly?........Feed a stray dog?....simple.... but what about the many people that go to bed in a box hungry every night?......How do we fix these things.....restore our nation?  reclaim ourselves? It seems that the move ironicly may be backwards to some of the things our ancestors once did.  going back to the earth, gardening, preserving,  COOKING!  eating slower, better, finding more 'natural alternatives' to our health issues.....co-op'ing,  biking, walking, using technology and the 'speed' it brings to our lives in balance and moderacy.  Taking the time to think before jumping...not jump and ask questions later.  Putting our spirituality, family, relationships, and health at the top of the list, not the bottom.....Loving my neighbor.... Taking time to appreciate the beauty that still exists around us....with in us.....BREATHE!.......Slow down.......find a quiet place meditate and pray.....listen to the creator.....Hopefully if I heed these warnings........make some needed changes I will still be here to watch my granchildren enjoy it, appreciate it. Live life to it fullest as God intended.....Possibly it isn't to late to teach the next generation so they'll be known 'as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.' As well as its not too late for me.