The instructions for life are easy to find, if you are interested in playing the board game called “Life.” On your turn, spin the wheel and move your car forward. Move the number of spaces on the spinner. If your space is occupied, move on to the next open space. Choose whether you want to start your career or start college. Get married. Have babies. Buy a house.1 Those are the instructions for life — if you want to play a board game.
But maybe you are looking for something that is more inspirational. The poet Mary Oliver once created a very short set of instructions for living a life: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”2 Those instructions are useful for the lives we actually live, as opposed to the life that’s found in a board game. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
Such guidance is nothing new. Long before Mary Oliver was born, the prophet Joel offered the people of Israel a set of instructions for life. He wanted them to be prepared for the coming day of the Lord, which he described as “a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!”3 He connected this day to a destructive locust attack that was afflicting the land, one that covered the mountains in a black swarm of insects. The locusts were eating vegetation like a hungry army, leaving nothing behind but destruction and desolation. In response to this threat, Joel asked the people to change their ways and return to God with fasting and mourning.
Specifically, Joel challenged them to return, learn, gather and pray. In a time of difficulty and danger, the prophet gave the people these instructions for life. They remain good goals for us today, especially on Ash Wednesday, as we begin the season of Lent and try to move closer to God. You could call them “Instructions for Lent”: Return, learn, gather and pray.
...approximately 1,390 words remaining. You are not logged in. Please see options at the top of this page to view complete sermon.
