Saturday 13 July 2013

They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green ... – Psalm 92:14

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 13, 2013): Psalm 92 & 93

In 1933, James Hilton wrote his classic novel “Lost Horizon.” The novel has had a massive impact on our culture, even if you have never even heard of the book – let alone have read it. It is in James Hilton’s 1933 book that we first find a place called Shangri-La – a fictional utopian monastery high up in the mountains of Tibet. In Hilton’s book, the main character (Hugh Conway) is kidnapped along with three other people and taken to this mountain hide out. And there they begin to realize what a paradise really looks like. In one of the many turns of the book, Hugh comes to the realization that the head of the monastery is really a Catholic monk who got lost in the mountains of Tibet over 200 years earlier. Shangri-La is not just a place of peace and refuge (James Hilton in “Lost Horizon” actually predicts that World War I will not be the last world conflict, but that there is another world wide war coming soon to Europe) but it is also a place of incredible health and longevity. In fact, it would seem that in Shangri-La was a place where people truly lived until the moment of their death.

The Psalmist in this Sabbath Day hymn, says that the righteous are like the inhabitants of Shangri-La in that they live until they die. The Psalmist reminds us of the incredible promise and potential that is in the lives that we are living - that there will be no moment when it is simply impossible for us to bear fruit. If we can draw breath, then there is still something that needs to be done.

And for most of us this is true. But we also have to admit that as we watch our population age that there are many people that are ending this life in illness, and sometimes in debilitating mental stress. It is so widespread that in the area where I live there are public service announcements imploring people to live healthier lives because most people will spend the final decade of their lives in sickness – and whether or not they lived good moral lives would seem to have little effect on that reality.

But then, maybe the way that we care for our earthly bodies is a moral discipline. It is our responsibility to care for that which God has given to us – so that we can be productive for him late in life. But we also have to admit that there is something that is at work in the world that seems to be totally beyond our ability to protect against. We know that Shangri-La is still a long way away from us – it is a place that we can only long for.

With the Psalmist we also have to admit that there is something permanent about our soul. There is something that goes beyond. For the righteous, it is a something that can never be touched by the pains of this world. Hugh in “Lost Horizon” leaves Shangri-La in order to help a friend, but the reader is left with the impression at the end of the book that Hugh returns to this place of incredible peace and health. What might be here only a dream, there could become a reality. And for the Psalmist that is something that he believes in and wants to point towards – this place of health and longevity where the righteous can make every moment count.   


Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 94

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