This Year, May There Be Goodness In Life

 

A group of citizens in a small town was busily engaged in digging a foundation for a new House of Worship when a disturbing thought occurred to one of the laborers. “What are we going to do with all the earth we are digging up? We certainly can’t leave it here.”

 There was much discussion – suggestions were flying here and there.

Suddenly one of the men smiled and held up his hand and said, “We will make a deep pit and shovel all the dirt into it.” Everyone applauded except one man who asked, “What will we do with the earth from the pit?”

Silence – and more thinking. And then finally another man raised his hand and said, “We’ll dig another pit and into that pit we will shovel all the earth we’re digging now together with all the earth from the first pit with one addition – we will make the second pit much larger to accommodate all the earth from the House of Worship and the first pit.”

Sometimes life is like that – we go from crisis to crisis, never thinking about the goodness in our lives. We just dig pit after pit, an endless cycle of despair.

And then there is the story of the man carrying a heavy load of wood and the load just keeps getting heavier and heavier until finally, in desperation, he puts the load down and cries out for the angel of death to come and take him so that he would no longer have to carry this heavy load. The angel of death hears the lament and appears and asks what the man wants from him. To which the man replies, “Could you please put the load back on my shoulders?” 

Sometimes it appears that the trials of life are too much for us. We think about how simple it would be if it was all over. But then we remember that life has more than burdens; life has good things like births and anniversaries and celebrations of one kind or another. When we weigh the good and the bad, we realize that the good outweighs the bad and life is just great.

What we say – what we do – can result in happiness or sadness. We control how our lives are lived in great measure.

Sometimes life is so simple, and we make it so difficult. Sometimes we create issues and incidents that tend to make life a chore. We can, if we will, make these the best years of our lives. We can all come in from the cold because life is too short to be so unhappy, and these years – the ones that lie ahead of us – can be rewarding and fulfilling if we try to make things easy for ourselves.

Here we are entering a New Year. Perhaps we should reflect on the goodness in each other. We should awake each day and look around. Life can be as simple as we like with just a little effort and gratitude.

As we enter the Chapel on Friday, January 16 let us join in and show our gratitude to the men and women who determined that the future of our lives and those of the community around us can be achieved through a willingness to serve. As they are installed, let’s congratulate them and encourage them for the sacrifices made on our behalf. We all benefit from their hard work.