A Word About RSV

People familiar with various editions and translations of the bible know those various translations by their initials. The King James version, for example, is often identified in literature when quoted as the KJV. And the New King James version is noted as the NKJV. The New American Standard is the NAS. And the Revised Standard Version is the RSV. Those last initials are what caught my eye two weeks ago. Not so much the Revised Standard Version of the bible, but the revised standard version of my everyday life.

In my book, ‘If I Should Die Before I Live,’ I describe the seven days I think God has given us to navigate. One of those days is the one we call Every Day. Probably the simplest way to define Every Day would be to say that it’s the day ‘life’ happens.  That’s why we call it ‘everyday life.’  Every Day is the day the six o’clock evening news comes on at precisely six o’clock. People go about their lives, picking up the laundry at the cleaners, or dropping the kids off at school. Babies are born and old people die and I get one day older, Every Day. Every Day can look a lot like life every other day, unless … well, unless the RSV shows up, and the standard version of life gets ‘revised.’

Sometimes, we revise the standard version of our lives by things we intend to see happen. The day our first child is born, our lives change forever. Before we had children, we were one way. But the second that baby comes into the world, we are changed forever. The day we get married is another of those RSV days. The day before I got married was what I might call a ‘standard’ day. My schedule was my own. My thoughts were my own. I ate what I wanted, and slept where I wanted, and lived my life the way I wanted. But the day I got married, the revised standard version began, and she — that woman I had asked to be my wife — now became the center of all of my choosings, and longings, and future. A new ‘standard version’ of life began.

Well, about two weeks ago, my wife had a fall in our driveway at home and fractured her neck at the C-1 and C-2 levels. She survived that painful fall but she will be in a healthcare facility for many more days, slowly adapting to life in a cervical collar, and the RSV — the revised standard version of everyday life, and life … Every Day.

I could not let the poignancy of the past several days of our lives proceed without mentioning here on Classic State of Mind that the grace of God and His sustaining power is a surety that needs no revisions. As our lives now adapt to a new picture of life for us that our God has known all along, we continue to rest in this powerful thought: There is nothing ‘standard’ in any revised standard version of life under God’s grace. 

Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)
“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”