Good News in a Pandemic 4. Creation

There is no doubt that Genesis reveals human beings as the crown of creation. 'So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.' [Genesis 1:27]

Time and again, though, the Bible demonstrates that they are not the totality of creation.  Take, for example, these verses from Psalm 104:

8 

The mountains rose, the valleys sank down

    to the place that you appointed for them.

9 

You set a boundary that they may not pass,

    so that they might not again cover the earth.

10 

You make springs gush forth in the valleys;

    they flow between the hills;

11 

they give drink to every beast of the field;

    the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

12 

Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell;

    they sing among the branches.

13 

From your lofty abode you water the mountains;

    the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work.

14 

You cause the grass to grow for the livestock

    and plants for man to cultivate,

that he may bring forth food from the earth 

and wine to gladden the heart of man,

15 

    

oil to make his face shine

    and bread to strengthen man's heart.

16 

The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly,

    the cedars of Lebanon that he planted.

17 

In them the birds build their nests;

    the stork has her home in the fir trees.

18 

The high mountains are for the wild goats;

    the rocks are a refuge for the rock badgers.

The Lord Jesus references creation many times; most starkly on Palm Sunday when he tells the critics of praising children in Jerusalem that if they silence the children the very stones on the hillsides will begin praising instead.

So, a pandemic certainly appears to mute human praise on earth.  Literally, because we cannot meet to sing and speak our praise - but perhaps also psychologically because we are emotionally and mentally reduced by the whole experience of lockdown and its attendant life inputs.

Yet we are but a part of creation.  

And the rest of it seems to be having a much better time!

The Lord may weep with us but He has plenty of reason to smile with many of the creatures and plants he has also made as the streets clear, the air clears and nature finds her voice.

Chemical Attack

Suddenly there were rats.

Some years ago villagers in parts of Borneo found rats everywhere and with them the threats that come from such an infestation.  

It seemed especially cruel because considerable efforts had recently been made by the World Health Organisation to eliminate another threat – mosquitoes.  

As if that wasn’t enough the thatched roofs of their homes were frequently collapsing, weakened by some other unwelcome pest.

There are times like this the world over.  Trouble comes in threes, goes the old saying.  That’s when we can get very touchy about God.  After all, it seems an oversight on His part that any trouble gets through at all and we feel the more aggrieved when it feels like He’s mistakenly let several enemies past the entry gate at once.

Back to Borneo.  

The rats, it turned out, had become numerous because the cats were not catching them any longer.  Why? Easy – the village cats had all fallen sick and died.  (That was perhaps a fourth calamity).  

The reason for the dead cats was harder to spot.  After all, what has your cat eaten on its roaming today?  It turned out that lizards were the problem.  Having eaten lizards for years the cats discovered too late that the lizards were now poisonous.  The lizards were poisonous because they ate the flies. The lizards had probably thought they were on to a good thing because the flies had recently become markedly easier to catch – well, often dead in fact.

[I digress to point out that the roofs of the houses were made of a thatch that was susceptible to moth larvae.  The said flies, until they began dying out, had always eaten enough larvae (before themselves being eaten by the lizards – are you still with me?) to keep the thatch in good order. Dead flies = happy munching moth larvae = collapsed roofs.]

The dead flies?  Ah yes. That was because of the World Health Organisation’s chemical attack on the mosquitoes (remember them?). The chemical was poisoning the flies too.  

All the bad things were part of one system failure.

Since Adam the Bible instructs human beings that they are in sin’s dysfunctional (theologians call it fallen) system.  Bad things happen amid remaining good things.  Why so many troubles?  What could they possibly have to do with each other?  The Bible makes it clear that it is Man, not God that has let the multiplicity of enemies through the door.  Our random agonies are in the collective chain of results from sin and natural judgment.

This is why, as the Bible ends, this promise is made: He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.

In Christ’s new order it is not that there will be fewer problems, less sin and reduced sadness. They will be gone. A failed system will have passed away. 

Tallulah

This week we read the great story of the missing tortoise, a story with a good deal more to teach about life.

Tallulah the tortoise went on a six month journey - amounting to 350 yards - from her Oxford home to a nearby school.  On Homelessness Sunday we ask - when was she homeless?

One answer is never - she carries her home with her!  But this wasn't quite as good as it seemed because she had become less than fully fit without the care of her owners.

Another answer is that she became homeless the moment she left the garden via a fox hole.  Though it is difficult to argue that if she had returned through the hole the next day.  It would have been a day trip rather than homelessness.

A third answer is that she became homeless at the point when her owners gave up looking for her.  This seems close to the truth though the microchip they had given her meant that even after they had stopped looking, she was capable of being returned home as she shortly will be.

Homelessness seems to me to be something about having no-one looking out for you - and no microchip.  You may have a very nice house and car and fine life or none of these things.  But you do not have a home.

It is the inestimable privilege of the child of God that, whether they have gone through an unfortunate fox hole or not, they always have a home.  Someone always has them on His heart.

A Second Look at a Christmas Card: No 2 The Donkeys

Today a fairly dreadful report has decided that the UK should officially not be Christian.  This idea seems a sad misreflection on the fact that the UK we live in owes almost everything in its better aspects of identity to the Christian faith.  

Christmas Cards are well ahead of the game on this issue however as can be seen here:

Without question this is a Christmas picture.  There's the Middle Eastern town in the background, the night sky with the great star (albeit in the wrong place) and the stable, the hay and the donkeys.  It reminds me of one of those holiday photographs (though this is a painting) when, in trying to capture the yacht passing the pier you end up with a seagull or a passing steam train is missed and you have a piece of fencing instead.

Dame Butler-Sloss (not for the first time unfortunately) did it, the Christmas card did it, I must remember to keep centred on what it's all really about - because I too might do it and end up, in the long run, looking like an ass.

Considering Cards - 9. Undercamelled

For everyone who does assemblies, carol services, sermons and written articles the challenge of Christmas returns each year demanding a new angle on an old and rather short story of angels, shepherds and wise men.

 

Just when you think there is no possible variation or speculation that you haven't considered along comes a Christmas card that introduces a new 'train' of thought. What if . . .

 

Biblically the story of the incarnation is animal-free.  A manger but no animals mentioned, shepherds that have left their sheep and wise men who must have travelled on something but we don't know what.

 

Tradition bequeaths us three wise men and therefore three camels.  It's speculative but tidy.  This card introduces the thought that there was only one camel.  It's certainly a new angle.

 

Did they have to sell the other camels to pay for the expensive gifts?

Is this where car lifts to church really began as they shared the one camel?

Most provocatively of all (as the wise man on the camel appears to have no gift) was Gold, Frankincense or Myrrh actually the name of the camel??