Skip to main content

God's Creation

Psalm 104:24-35 (https://www.biblegateway.com, NRSVA)
We’re often told that the people of ancient Israel feared the sea, but here the psalmist seems to positively relish it. The earth is full of God’s creatures, and the psalmist has already thought about the birds and the beasts earlier in the psalm, but here he or she begins to describe life in the great, wide ocean deeps. 
Innumerable creeping things are there. The mind boggles! Are these crabs and lobsters? What about the innumerable fish that used to swim among the Red Sea reefs? 
Leviathan gets a mention. Is that meant to be a whale? Or a crocodile? Or a dragon, as in the Greek translation of the Old Testament? Or is it the seven-headed sea monster which battled with the rain god Baal in ancient Canaanite religion? If so, it’s no longer a frightening foe but a playmate or clubbable friend created for God to sport with.
God’s wisdom has created life on earth and his spirit or breath gives breath to all living things. God creates and regenerates.
The last section of the psalm celebrates God’s creativity and power on an even grander scale. He is the God of earthquakes and volcanoes, responsible not just for life but for the very building blocks of the earth itself, the tectonic plates and their ceaseless movement.
Rather petulantly, the psalmist prays that those who are disobedient might ‘be consumed’ or ‘disappear from the earth’ and in the lectionary this verse is omitted so that the psalm ends with a paeon of praise. But in an age of global warming perhaps the psalmist is reminding us that those who undermine the fragile unity of creation do not deserve to share in it. Could that be all of us? No wonder that the psalmist prays that our meditation might be pleasing to God.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his ...
14 comments
Read more

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a...
1 comment
Read more

Luther and Loyola

James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 Within Christianity there has always been a tension between two poles. At one end of the spectrum stands Martin Luther, who said that Christian faith is about trusting in God to put us right - or make us righteous - through the saving death of Jesus. Luther came to this conclusion when he was a professor of New Testament studies in a little town in Germany called Wittenberg. One year he decided to teach his students about Paul’s letter to the Romans and that’s when it suddenly dawned upon him that Christian faith is all about trust. At the other end of the spectrum , stands someone like Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Society of Jesus. He spent a lot of his later life in crisis, first struggling to overcome severe wounds that he had suffered when he was a soldier and then during two short periods locked up in a cell by the Spanish Inquisition. He came to believe that the Christian life is a similar sort of struggle, a lifelon...
Post a Comment
Read more