Focusing on the Big Picture

AM Psalm 69:1-23 (24-30) 31-38 • PM Psalm 73
Eccles. 11:9-12:14 • Gal. 5:25-6:10 • Matt. 16:21-28

Do you ever get very worked up about how something is going to turn out? I know that lately, I’ve been planning a wedding. There are so many little details you can really worry about with the colors and timeline. There are big things to really fret over, such as old family tensions. If I feel like I have things under control I can get on facebook, join a bridal group, and people can help me find even more things to stress over. Sometimes it feels like an addiction.

As I was sitting up in bed at 3:00AM thinking about caterers and wondering how to break this cycle, I remember I was assigned the reading from Ecclesiastes. This wisdom book reminds us that, basically, none of it really matters because we all are going to die in the end. If that sounds pessimistic, it’s not meant to be! Thinking about the goal is really comforting. To put it into the perspective of the wedding, one of my coworkers said, “In the end, you’ll be married.”

Happily, Jesus puts an asterisk at the end of this teaching in our Matthew reading.* In the end, death is not the only thing waiting on us. Resurrection, is too! And in the same vein, being married is not the only thing waiting at the end of a wedding ceremony, but a melding of lives that I cannot quite comprehend on this side of my save-the-date.

Written by Haley Hixson

I’ll be getting married in October at our very own Saint Paul’s!

*A note on resurrection—Before Jesus talked of his own resurrection, the Pharisees believed in it, and before the Pharisees, Elijah—Jesus was not the first to introduce the idea of resurrection!