Saturday, February 6, 2021
The beauty of polar cold,
deep freeze polar cold,
first hand.
Job 42:5-6
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
Acts 9:3-5
Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’
Words of Grace For Today
My father served as the first civilian doctor to winter over at McMurdo when it ceased to be a military base. He tells of being asked if he’d like to hop a ride with one of the specialists out on a snowmobile. The wonders of light against the ice and snow, the distant mountains in one direction, the ocean in the other, and the shear size all came through in the email to us ‘kids’. And it was cold, real cold.
Living then on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia the winters were cold and impossible for travel if it dipped below freezing and snowed. There were few if any snow tires on the vehicles there, and lots of balding summer tires, so the cars slipped and slid, jamming up the hillside roads, and even the gentle slopes along the coastal water. I could only remember cold from my previous ‘lives’ in Minnesota and Alberta.
Before he hopped on the back of the snowmobile, my father suited up covering every stitch of skin with protective gear. He did not say they travelled fast. It would be hard enough on the machinery at a reasonable pace. It was just that at -75⁰ C everything is a huge bit different…. He missed one small piece between a glove layer and a jacket (if I remember that location correctly). He felt nothing besides the regular cold and returned with a severe frostbit patch of skin. He was fortunate not to loose a piece of flesh to the cold-burn.
Cold, so cold that it burns skin dead with freezing very quickly. We can hear of it, but until one feels the cold it is hard to imagine how powerful the cold really is.
A hard deep cold has hit the prairies extending across the central US as well. It was down to -34⁰ here last night and will get colder yet through the next two nights if forecasts are to be believed. Still a short walk outside is easy, a longer work session possible, even a long walk is doable with the warmest clothing. Cold so cold it freezes skin without any pain is a whole other level of cold.
Like the jogger who went out in shorts for his morning 3 mile run in a deep freeze and returned to have both legs amputated they were so damaged from the freezing.
Saul is enthusiastic and powerful with letters to pursue, detain and punish heretics, followers of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. Then Jesus shows himself first hand to Saul. That transforms Saul’s life of persecuting followers of The Way, to one of Jesus’ most dedicated disciples, spreading the Good News around the east and north of the Mediterranean Sea, which proves to be the birthing of the Christian Church beyond Jerusalem, which sets the ground work for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to reach us even in this millennium.
Job loses everything, wife, children, wealth, and even his health. His friends bring him encouragement to confess his sins. The widespread belief is that if someone suffers at all it is a result of that person’s own sins. There may be no relief from the suffering, so the only thing to do is to confess and beg God for forgiveness.
This belief is alive and well today under many guises. It is a handy way to blame those who suffer for their suffering, to avoid one’s own responsibility for others’ sufferings, and to convince oneself that one is above such misfortune (because one does not sin like ‘that’ person has!)
Job knows he has not sinned in such a way as to have deserved the horrific loses and suffering he has faced. Job has heard all about God, believes in God, and prays to God (and yells in defiance at God)!
Then God appears face to face with Job!
That changes everything!
Job responds: now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
It’s deep freeze cold. We do not know cold though until we experience it in person.
It’s God’s creation. We can believe in God, and pretend we’ve earned our place before God. Then God appears in person to us and … we know how undeserving we are of God’s Grace and …
We know first hand how wondrous and life-changing God’s Grace is for us and …
We know God’s Grace is nothing if we do not share it with everyone, as freely and as graciously as God has shared it with us!
Then there is beauty in every piece of life, just as there is beauty in the cold of coldest deep freeze polar cold.