Loading...God’s Creativity is a Wonder
The water temperature at Dee’s Landing is forty five degrees. I was made to wear a wetsuit to join the River Rats on the Wednesday afternoon swim. We lasted for twenty five minutes. My last open water swim of the year was my first official swim with the unofficial open water swimming group. I can’t wait until the season opens up again!! (If you are wondering where Kathy my kayaker is she is safe and sound in hibernation mode until the water is a safe enough temperature for her to kayak.)
It is officially cold weather season. Only nineteen days until we cross the threshold from fall to winter. The days are short and have been mostly cloudy. If you wanted to look for signs of distress in the sun moon and stars how would you see them through the cloud cover? — except Jesus says he is coming IN a cloud. He could have shown up anywhere in the weather from this last week.
Besides the clouds, Jesus says to look to the heavens and the seas if you want to see what it looks like when he comes again. The heavens shake and the sea roars. That sounds like a good time to crawl under the covers and hide, not stand and raise your head. What if a star falls on you? What is a wave pulls you under?
Distress is not the state of mind I expect or want to feel when Jesus comes near. In December, I am thinking more about the small innocent baby than the gloomy man with ominous predictions. Wouldn’t salvation from my sins feel like the warm sun rising on my cold face over a beautiful ocean horizon with some sea birds flying across for effect. Isn’t Jesus going to make everything that isn’t ok, ok? What is all this talk of distress?
Redemption, as described by Jesus in Luke’s gospel doesn’t look anything like my serene beachside retreat. Redemption, as described in many places in the Bible, feels like a survivalist lesson in who can endure the most natural disasters.
The word “redemption” in English literally means to buy back. The original Greek word means to lose. Loosened. Let go. Only in the 14th century did “redemption” become associated with being delivered from sin. Today, for me, salvation means losing what needs to be lost to be loosed from what holds tightly. Where I have experienced great distress, I have also experienced great loss, loosening, redemption, being bought back from that to which I had been sold.
This week the Insight Lander, a information probe that spent the past six months traveling to Mars, landed on Mars. One of the scientists’ goals is to see how much Mars shakes. A heat probe will burrow 5 meters deep to gain insight. Seismometers will measure how much the planet’s core wobbles. Based on how Mars shakes tells scientists what Mars is made of. How cool is that!
The times I feel most shaken are the times when I have learned of what I am made.
Humans are made of the same kinds of stuff Mars is made of: atoms.
Heavenly bodies contain the same kinds of materials as earthly bodies.
Human bodies contain oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. Then we are electrified and filled with breath (not a scientific explanation, just a poetic explanation). Mars’ material contains iron, magnesium, aluminum, calcium, and potassium. Scientists are looking for signs of more from Mars. Is there electricity? Is there breath?
We can’t always see where life is on the surface. In fact, sometimes on the surface, things can look mostly dead. Or deadly.
This week Ellen and Tim, who minister at Wayside Christian Mission, learned that a man named “Quick” was burned to death in his wheelchair in the tent city where he lives down by the creek. I marvel at how the world can be filled with such dark deadliness? Then I consider Ellen and Tim and all who deliver food and other needs to those who live in the tent city by the creek and marvel: how can the world contain such unleashed light!?
You and I and The Incarnate Son of God are made of the same stuff that makes stuff stuff. That’s what makes it true when someone criticizes Christianity for being the most materialistic religion in the world. We are! You can look for more but when you find Jesus you will see he is made of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. God’s creativity is a wonder.
Exploring creation is an act of praise, whether it is for scientific investigation or spiritual connection.
My father always encouraged the connection between science and theology. He gave me this prayer book when I was confirmed. Over the years, I filled it with additional prayers he gave me. One of them is from Johannes Kepler. All those years ago did my father know how much sense it would make that with all the traditional prayers of the Anglican tradition I would also need a German astrophysicists prayer? I certainly have.
Not long ago, during the nights after my family was shaken apart, I would sit outside in the backyard keeping company with the stars. Their steadfast sparkliness comforted me when I felt as confused as if the ocean had roared right into Kentucky. There they were, in the dark of night, those bright stars and planets defiantly praising their maker. In my distress I looked to the heavens, the source of the signs of distress Jesus describes. And there I found what Kepler found: a harmony between worlds. In those long cold nights my prayer sounded something a bit sassy combined with a bit scared like, Lord if you can make stars and planets you can handle my heart, It’s breaks and aches and even it’s attacks. Odd sounding, yet an exaltation nonetheless.
Johannes Kepler is far more eloquent, although he himself was well acquainted with distress.
Among other losses (loosenings) a childhood with smallpox rendered his sight too weak to work with telescopes, limiting him to the mathematical rather than observational aspects of astronomy. Nevertheless, he was able to probe God’s grace. He taught me a deep appreciation for the way God works with stars and praises. And he taught me this prayer. In the winter days ahead, may it grace your path in both the light of the sun and dark of the night. And where you feel distress may it shake loose this kind of praise:
Kepler's Prayer from De Harmonice Mundi
O Thou. Who by the light of nature
promotes in us the desire for the light of grace,
that by its means Thou may transport us into the light of glory,
I give thanks to Thee, O Lord Creator,
Who has delighted me with Thy makings
and in the works of Thy hands have I exulted.
Amen.
https://www.space.com/42573-mars-insight-landing-site-flyover-video.html
