If This Were Your Last Day…

SUN., AUG. 31, 1997, 6:07 AM
FARM, STUDY

I have told you, yea many times now, that you shall live as long as I want you to live. Therefore you must trust that I have this capacity, and that your journey on to a spirit realm will not be soon. You still are in transition from full-time employment to retirement, and you assume you will have some years in this emeritus status. Yet certain conditions of this early morning urge you to consider… what if this were your last day on earth, as Bob Russell?

First, of course, you would be here, in this familiar place, with this pen and this pad, writing a Teaching as you hear it from Me, Holy Spirit. Nothing would be more appropriate than tuning your spirit to Me, and hearing words of wisdom and advice. If this were your day of transition from life to Life you should be listening to Me here, as a prelude to being with me there. So, yes, you are right in being here, no matter “what day” it is.

Since it is a Sunday you should go to church and worship in a familiar place with a congregation of friends. You have no official role (other than Newsletter editor), but you have My encouragement to greet people and show forth My love in your characteristic way. Read the assigned Scriptures. Participate fully in the prayers. Listen to the sermon and consider applications of thoughts from it. Sing with gusto, feeling the music and all that each hymn represents. Savor the whole experience of worship on a Sunday morning in summer.

If this were your last day you would spend little time on the news of the day. News, as reported in any of the media, tends to focus on harm to people and not on the many incidents of love and concern that I see as much more normative. Conversation… contemplation… appreciation… these are the ways I recommend spending days on earth, your last or just one of many more.

Ready some more of Our Ruminations for mailing, with notes on more of them than is usual. Think about the folks to whom they go, with remembered interactions, social and spiritual. Read this one again, as well as others, written earlier. Take a volume of Teachings and re-read some of what I have told you over these years that we’ve shared in this unique, intimate way.

Cut some grass and feel the life in your body, including the sweat that exertion produces on a summer afternoon. Fertilize the roses, even if you were to see no more blooms. Cut down a tree. Plant another one, symbolizing that life replaces life. Feed your animals, and appreciate the life they have, even as it is shorter and much more limited.

Watch some football, if the teams are “appealing”, remembering how participation in that game enriched your young life, directly and indirectly, and how coaching others to play well was a “giving-back” process, yet there is no need to watch over-long, for this is no longer a focus of your active life. Listen to and appreciate some music, for music is part of every realm I have created.

Consider the balances between activity and rest… between interactions with others and contemplation, with Me as your Guide… between being responsible and taking time to be irresponsible, in your culture’s terms.

Consider what you shall do with all that you plan to bring home from your office, an exercise in trust that this is not your last day… and that you will have to keep deciding what to keep and what “departs from your life”.