Hello,
The ancients looked up into the midnight sky and saw all sorts of
things: bears, hunters, horses and chariots. Me, when I look up into the ebony above, my imagination
isn’t quite as lively. I see the
same dots as they did, but for the life of me, no matter how I connect them I
don’t see any of the figures outlined in the sky that they saw, except for two:
the big and little dippers.
This past week it happened that I woke in the middle of the night and
took a glance out the large picture windows that catch the view of the ridge to
our west, Chestnut Ridge, of which I wrote last week. Away from the city lights lots of stars pepper the sky
making any dot to dot attempt an exercise in futility. But on that night in my westward gaze for
reasons unknown the Big Dipper stood out in spectacular clarity, suspended as
low as I can remember over the valley leading to the ridge.
The fact of it’s prominence and shallow pitch might have passed me as
interesting, but not worthy of a Bungee Cord column, except that just shortly
before dark we were dealt a cascading rain, a remnant from the hurricane dubbed
Isaac. As the sun was handing over
its duties over to the moon, it hid itself from sight behind clouds that were
almost as dark as the midnight sky, clouds out of which poured buckets of
rain. Raindrops as big as
watermelons (ok…that is a slight exaggeration) pummeled earth, and with the
wind that accompanied them tree limbs thicker than a football player’s thigh
surrendered to their assault.
And so at that late hour, surprised to
see any stars at all given the storm that had not so long ago raged, it caught
me as humorous irony to see the big dipper spotlighted in the sky, hanging
there empty and my ears imagined God saying with a smirk, “Was that enough
water for you?”
Humor aside, there are parts of our world that would be quick to say,
“Yes. Enough already!” as flood
waters sweep across fields and foundations. Joining them in discordant stereo, farmers of the Midwest
would with equal speed say of this summer, “Thanks God, but it was a little too
much too late.”
I have lived with farmers and have prayed with them to God for the
blessing of rain, rain to yield a crop so bountiful so that no one on earth
would go to bed with hunger in their belly. And I have prayed,
“enough with the rain,” as
one trying to build a house last summer where the longest period without rain
was one three day stretch. I pray,
all the while knowing, that there are many in the world who scoff at such
prayers, saying they are the simple minded prayers of ancient star gazers.
But I think that there is more than that to such prayers, and such
prayers are deeper than that. For
me, such prayers do not disregard the scientific world that understands that
climate is a delicate dance with pressure systems and moisture sources, a dance
that seems to have at best a moderate predictability of where it will carry
itself on the dance floor. Rather
such prayers concur with science that despite our grandest desires, we, humans,
face each day dwarfed by forces that are far greater than we. Forces of wind and pressure systems
that care nothing about us.
But amid all the forces we face, there is a force, a force of power and
love so great that even crushed death as if it were a mere ant, and that force actually cares about
us. As we say in human terms,
cares about us with his whole heart.
It is to that self-emptying force, the one whose love for us forced him
to the cross, and the one whose resolve to fill us with that love forced open
the Easter tomb….it is to that one that we lift our prayers in the face of
drought or flood….not as simple minded star gazers, but as ones with the wisdom
to place ourselves (and the world) in the hands of the one who has shown to be
the one who will let no force (Rom. 8) wrest us from his care.
This of which I speak is not a force as fictional as Star Wars, but it
is as real as droughts and floods, tornados and hurricanes, gusts and gales…..as
real as the cross and resurrection.
Lord…..into your hands we commend our very selves.
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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