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Wednesday, March 10, 2010 |
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1676 S.
Belcher Rd. 
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About the weekly message and its author: Tom Ehrich began writing daily "On a Journey" meditations in 1993, after a handful of friends worldwide had formed an online community seeking God in daily life. He is a priest and journalist for a nationally syndicated column that goes to more than 100 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. Tom Ehrich's idea is that God can be glimpsed in everyday life. In pieces of about 475 words, published six days a week, Tom looks at small incidents of daily life, connects them to the coming Sunday's Bible readings and seeks meanings that will touch every reader's life. Tom has given us permission to post something weekly from him on our web site. A person can subscribe to online daily meditations for $24/year. The web site is: www.onajourney.org Meditations on God in Daily Life by Tom Ehrich Inheritance Jesus said, "There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.' So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living.” (Luke 15.11b-13) While I was leading a men's retreat in Nebraska on being a “pilgrim in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world,” four college classmates were attending a mutual friend's funeral in St. Louis. John's life proved my point about this “V.U.C.A. world.” Not everything worked out as he had planned. And yet the church was full, family celebrated the treasure of his life, friends felt embraced in an extended clan of love, and one classmate, writing from the airport, said he was “emotionally exhausted” but felt privileged to have been part of such a celebration. Some day, whatever wealth John had accumulated will be distributed. But this wasn't about money. It never was. It was about living. It was about having potential and trying to live into it. It was about breaking through barriers, especially the self-imposed. It was about making one's peace with actual outcomes, remaining fully human and fully alive even as worldly greatness proved elusive, and discovering what truly makes one's mark in the world. On the retreat, friends told me about a short semi-documentary film called “Taking Chance,” about escorting the body of a fallen 19-year-old Marine home to his family and to burial. The escort, played by Kevin Bacon, takes his duty seriously, stays with his comrade every minute, even sleeping on a floor next to the casket, and gives a final salute of great dignity and honor. Some will leave wealth to their heirs. Most of us, I think, will leave the inheritance of our lives. We share that inheritance from the moment a child is born, in the love we try to give our partners, and in the example we set in dealing with the burden of potential, the realities of living, the failures that teach us and the successes from which we need to be shielded. “Dissolute living,” as Jesus called it, will ensnare most of us at one time or another. But by the grace of God, redemption is always before us. Some know redemption in this life, some discover it in God's eternal embrace. But all of us deserve to be escorted home with dignity to a place filled with the people our lives have touched. Whether or not we leave much “property” to divide among them, those lives will be our inheritance. The prodigal son didn't come home for more money. He came home for a father's love.
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