Thursday, September 16, 2021
Creation and All In It
Is God’s Gifts
For Us All!
Psalm 36:7
How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
Matthew 6:26
Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
Words of Grace For Today
Take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, in the safety of God’s steadfast love. All other ‘security’ is an illusion, a deception, and a departure from God’s kingdom into the Devil’s realms. Under God’s wings, like that of a great bird of the sky soaring at will, God brings us to adventures we would not imagine, to places and understandings where life is abundant, and to challenges and work that fulfill all our yearning to participate in creation.
As autumn sets firmly in on the land, giving great respite from the bugs, the heat, and the huge influx of 2-legged animals in the wilderness (only some who are dangerous or greatly destructive to the land, scarring it with tire ruts, garbage strewn about, feces and toilet paper in the woods, and all sorts of materials half burned in the fire circles that sterilize the soil beneath and pollute the air above) …
As autumn sets firmly in on the land, we breathe easier.
As autumn sets firmly in on the land, great flocks of geese of 100s and 1000s, make a distant chorus, moving in V’s for days to traverse 1000s of miles from the waters of the north to the temperate winters in the south.
As autumn sets firmly in on the land, birds of prey, great hawks, owls, and bald eagles screech high as they circle for hours seeking their prey. Song birds like my neighbours the robins spend all hours out in the meadow hunting worms and bugs for food.
Whether autumn sets firmly in on the land or not, in all seasons and times, one has to wonder about these words of Jesus. For as God provides for the birds without their sowing or reaping into barns, first: their lives seem to be wholly directed toward finding food and avoiding being food; second: there are and were also in Jesus day so many people who neither sow nor reap and they worry most about what they will eat and what they will wear, for their choices are so many it is only as ignorant shame that they indulge such luxury as most of the world suffers without enough food, clothing, shelter … and now fresh water and clean air, yet alone meaningful work and people to love and be loved by.
The point is clear from Jesus’ words: our attention and concern should be less on all the required labour needed to survive (or luxuriate in over abundance.) Our attention and concern is better spent on understanding the mystery, freedom and peace that is available to us when we, our lives long, learn to seek refuge, meaning, and purpose in God’s steadfast love. For there, comforted, protected, and challenged, we can see life with clarity.
What we see with clarity is that our lives were designed by God and given to each of us by God in order that we can extend God’s steadfast love to others.
We simply cannot do that if our primary concern is providing for ourselves, for then we turn inward and bend reality from God’s great creation to our own insatiable appetites. We become instead of caretakers of creation, destroyers of creation. We become incapable of seeing others as Christ sees them: broken people in need of God’s love.
God help us when we make that turn away from God’s steadfast love as our only sure refuge.
Thank God, God always calls us, welcomes us, and renews us so that we can return to God (… home in God’s kingdom to be the ones who exercise God’s unconditional, steadfast love for all people) so that we can take refuge in the shadow of God’s wings, in the safety of God’s steadfast love. All other ‘security’ is an illusion, a deception, and a departure from God’s kingdom into the Devil’s realms. Under God’s wings, like that of a great bird of the sky soaring at will, God brings us to adventures we would not imagine, to places and understandings where life is abundant, and to challenges and work that fulfill all our yearning to participate in creation. … home in God’s kingdom we are the saints who exercise God’s unconditional, steadfast love for all people.