St. Patrick's Day

SACPC family and friends, Feels like a week of Mondays right now. St. Patrick's Day and not a pub in the land can safely open? When I feel like this, I like to remember that God is not a fan of Mondays. At all. Yes, it’s true, biblically speaking. In her wonderful book, The Grammar of God, Aviya Kushner points out that on the second day of creation (which in our measure of time is Monday) God does not declare it to be good. That powerful poetic line is absent. Go back, read Genesis 1 and see for yourself. I’m sure God meant to say it and, certainly thought it, but I also love that our Lord just couldn’t declare Monday good. Was he ever more my Lord?? But Tuesday. Today. The third day of creation, God makes up for lost time by not just declaring his creation good once but twice! In verse 10 and 12 of Genesis 1, we read vayahr elohim ki tov, God saw that it was good. In some Jewish Orthodox communities, Tuesday is doubly blessed, a day of divine love and considered the best day to get married. It’s really hard to declare this Tuesday, or this time, or anything at all right now, good. We are in uncharted waters with this global pandemic, and we wake up wondering when things will get back to normal, if they ever will get back to normal? It is a scary time. But we don’t need to be afraid. We can be cautious, careful, concerned and, for a little while, contained. But not afraid. Whatever we have to face and endure, we will do so together with God’s grace and help. This Sunday we will be reading and discussing 2 Corinthians 4:7-10 and how faith is indeed faith for such a time like this. Last thought for here today: Hebrew is beautiful and also wonderfully challenging to translate. We could read Genesis 1: God saw that it was good- as an affirmation. Or we could correctly read the Hebrew as: and God saw that it will be good - an invitation, a holy wish, a divine prescription. As we live through these difficult and uncertain days, may we trust that what God creates and inspires was, is and will be good.