We are Stewards of God’s Creation

Psalm 104 details the beauty of God’s work in creation, with verse 24 offering something of a summarizing statement for the entire psalm: “O Lord, how manifold are your works!  In wisdom you have made them all.” 

That verse reverberated in the mind of Robert Boyle, who is considered the Father of Modern Chemistry.  Boyle said, “[When] I study the book of nature, I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, ‘How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all!’”

Isaac Newton agreed, he commented, “The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

A children’s book, The Chance World, describes an imaginary planet on which things happen unpredictably.  The sun might rise one day or it might not, or it might appear at any hour.  Some days the moon might come up in place of the sun.  One day you might jump up and not come down.  The next day, you might find gravity so strong you cannot even lift your feet.  Scottish biologist Henry Drummond read the book and commented that in such a world “reason would be impossible.  It would become a lunatic world with a population of lunatics.”

This is not a lunatic world comprised only of lunatics, for it was designed and formed in a loving and careful way.  Brennan Manning elaborates: “”The slant of the earth, for example, tilted at an angle of twenty-three degrees, produces our seasons.  Scientists tell us that if the earth had not been tilted exactly as it is, vapors from the oceans would move both north and south, piling up vast continents of ice.  If the moon were only 50,000 miles away from earth instead of 250,000, the tides might be so enormous that all continents would be submerged in water—even the mountains would be eroded.  If the crust of the earth had been only ten feet thicker, there would be no oxygen, and without it all animal life would die.  Had the oceans been a few feet deeper, carbon dioxide and oxygen would have been absorbed and no vegetable life would exist” (The Ragamuffin Gospel, p. 33-34).  As the psalmist puts it, “O Lord, how manifold are your works!  In wisdom you have made them all.”

The old comic strip For Better or Worse offers a wonderful perspective.  Brother and sister, Michael and Elizabeth, are walking through the woods together on an autumn day.  Michael remarks, “The leaves are starting to turn, Elizabeth.”  His sister replies, “Uh huh.”  Michael continues, “I wonder why some trees make red leaves and some make yellow or orange ones…. It’s almost as if God does it on purpose just to make this time of year more beautiful.”  Elizabeth replies, “Yeah, He’s like that.” 

Indeed, God fills this world with beauty because God is like that!

What the great musical composer Igor Stravinski said about composing music also applies to the creation of the universe: “To create, there must be a dynamic force, and no force is more potent than love.”  The good news for us is that God created this world out of the dynamic force of love.  Thus the love of God fills every nook and cranny of the universe—and we get to enjoy it!

Because of the beauty and order and love we find in God’s creation, I find myself deeply challenged by verse 31 of Psalm 104: “May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works.”  This verse challenges us, as followers of Christ, to do our part to protect and care for “the glory of the Lord” in the beauty and the order of his creation. 

Grace Ruiter, writing on behalf of the Reformed Church of America Commission on Christian Action, points out, “Our responsibility to care for God’s creation is sort of life the ultimate babysitting gig.  A babysitter temporarily acts as a child’s primary caregiver, attending to the child’s needs and keeping the child safe.  The child does not belong to the babysitter, but the responsibility for that child’s care does for a period of time.  Similarly, the earth is not ours, but we have been entrusted with caring for it, protecting what God has made so that it can be enjoyed for generations to come.”

Billy Graham put it this way, “Why should we be concerned about the environment?  It isn’t just because of the dangers we face from pollution, climate change, or other environmental problems—although these are serious.  For Christians, the issue is much deeper: We know that God created the world, and it belongs to Him, not us.  Because of this, we are only stewards or trustees of God’s creation, and we aren’t to abuse or neglect it.  The Bible says, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.  The world, and all who live in it’ (Psalm 24:1).  When we fail to see the world as God’s creation, we will end up abusing it.  Selfishness and greed take over, and we end up not caring about the environment or the problems we’re creating for future generations.”

If we are to join in the prayer, “May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works,” then let us also seek to take good care of God’s creation.

Mercy’s Touch

Mark 1:40 tells of “a leper” who fell on his knees before Jesus.  Mark provides no name of the man who came to Jesus, and no information about the man’s age, family background, social standing, accomplishments in life or failures in life.  Mark tells us only that the man was “a leper.”  But with those two words, we know much about the man.  We know that he was:

• Unwelcome.  By Mosaic Law, he was not permitted to live in or to roam the streets of any walled city.  Walls provided security for the residents of the city by keeping enemies out.  The implication was difficult to avoid: a leper fit the criteria of an enemy.
• Despised. It was illegal for anyone to greet him.  People were required to stay at least six feet away from him at all times.  If the wind was blowing from his direction, people would scurry as many as 50 yards away from him.  If he should wander too close, people were known to hurl rocks at him to drive him away.
• Isolated.  Though some synagogues made concessions to enable a leper to worship God, the leper had to be hidden away in an isolated chamber, ten feet high and six feet wide.  In Jerusalem, while others assembled in great gatherings of fellowship and camaraderie, a leper had to be closed up within the Chamber of the Lepers.  Nazarites, too, had their own chamber on the temple grounds, but they were separated from others at their own choosing.  A leper was separated from others by rejection.
• Feared.  Even in 20^th century America, lepers were so feared and reviled that leg irons were used to incarcerate stricken individuals in the Leper Home in Carville, Louisiana.  Nancy was 17 in 1945, when she was diagnosed with leprosy, and was quarantined at Carville until 1969.  “The only good thing about it,” she recalled, “was that everyone had the same disease.  There wasn’t anyone scared of you” (San Francisco Chronicle, 1/29/95, p. 2).
• As good as dead.  By the Middle Ages, when a person contracted leprosy, a funeral was said over the diseased person.  The message was unavoidable: according to the rest of society, a leper may as well seal himself up in a coffin. 

It would have taken much courage—or much desperation—for “a leper” to have approached Jesus that day, risking further rejection and the rocks that might have been hurled at him.  But he does so, falling before Jesus and saying to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” 

He does not ask whether Jesus is capable of healing him; he asks whether Jesus is willing to heal a leper.  The rabbis of the time taught that it was as unlikely for a person to be cured of leprosy as it would be for a person to die and come alive again.  Yet this man had more faith than the rabbis.  He believed that Jesus could do it.  He merely questioned whether Jesus would do so.

Mark records that Jesus was “moved with pity.”  The Greek word used here is splagchnistheis, which comes from the Greek word for one’s entrails.  Splagchnistheis has to do with feeling pain in one’s very gut.  The point Mark is making here is that Jesus ached inside over the rejection, animosity and loneliness this man had been living with. 

In response, Mark tells us that Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose.  Be made clean.’”

Mercy takes into consideration the hurts and sorrows and emotional needs of another.  Out of such mercy for the man with leprosy, Jesus did not simply declare the leprosy to be eradicated, Jesus “stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose.  Be made clean!” 

That touch reached beyond layers of skin to the man’s wounded soul with a message of acceptance and connection.  In his book The Jesus I Never Knew, Philip Yancy describes the impact of touch to a leper: “Though they may not hurt, leprosy patients surely suffer, as much as any people I have ever known.  Almost all the pain they feel comes from outside, the pain of rejection imposed on them by the surrounding community.  Dr. Brand told me of one bright young man he was treating in India.  In the course of the examination Brand laid his hand on the patient’s shoulder and informed him through a translator of the treatment that lay ahead.  To his surprise the man began to shake with muffled sobs.  ‘Have I said something wrong?’ Brand asked his translator.  She quizzed the patient in a spurt of Tamil and reported, ‘No, doctor.  He says he is crying because you put your hand around his shoulder.  Until he came here no one had touched him for many years.’” (p. 171)

Because Jesus cared about the agony of a leper’s soul, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man…even though that touch brought unpleasant consequences to Jesus. 

Legally, a leper was classified as an “unclean” person.  One consequence of such a classification was that he or she was not permitted to spend the night within a walled city.  Anyone who should happen to touch a leper also became classified and stigmatized as unclean for seven days.  All the restrictions that pertained to a leper were now thrust upon the one who had contact with the leper.  By stretching out his hand to touch that leper, Jesus was considered unclean for a week.  It is no surprise, therefore, that Mark reports, “Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country.” 

Mercy has to do with bearing the suffering of another person even to the extent of suffering along with that person.  Jesus determined that this leper was worth the suffering he endured, so Jesus touched him and bore his stigma.  Three years later, Jesus determined that we were worth the suffering he would endure upon the cross, so he laid down his life for us.  That was the epitome of mercy!

Be Renewed like an Eagle

Psalm 103 begins with a call to us to bless God, and with a call to us to remember the benefits God brings to our lives, and with a promise from God to renew our lives: “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name.  bless the lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits—who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.”

About the promise to renew us like an eagle, former President Jimmy Carter writes, “For us, the eagle is an especially powerful handsome bird, an emblem of strength and beauty.  However, the eagle had an additional meaning for the ancient Hebrews.  Because it molts (sheds and regrows) all its feathers annually, they viewed the eagle as having a new life each year.  Like the phoenix, new life emerged from the old.” (in Sources of Wisdom)

How can we enjoy the gift of renewed life that the eagle symbolizes?

Here are two suggestions:

1: As the eagle sheds and regrows its feathers, we need to shed our sins to grow a better soul.  The way we do this is through a frequent practice of facing our sinful tendencies, confessing them to God, and repenting.  Ruth Haley Barton writes, “When we fail to name reality accurately, we are left to wander around in the wilderness of our illusions because we are hiding from ourselves and from God.  We remain in bondage to that which does not take us forward in the life of grace, which is the very thing we say we want.  The good news is that when we name our situation correctly—even (and perhaps most especially!) the parts that are so painful to acknowledge—we become more real.  This is an awakening that leads to what is described in Christian tradition as the purgative way.” (Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, p. 53)

In his commentary on 2 Corinthians 10, William Barclay shares, “Max Warren tells of a custom of the natives in New Guinea.  At certain times they have ritual songs and dances…and the ritual culminates in what are called ‘the murder songs,’ in which they shouted before God the names of the people they wished to kill.  When the natives became Christian, they retained these customs and that ritual, but in the murder songs, it was no longer the names of the people they hated, but the names of the sins they hated, that they shouted before God and called on him to destroy.”

We are renewed like an eagle when we face and confess and repent of our sinful tendencies.

2: We are renewed as we work for the repairing of the world around us.  Donna Frischnecht Jackson, editor of Presbyterians Today, writes, “I recently came across a Hebrew phrase used in the Jewish tradition when referring to the act of mending: tikkun olam, which means ‘to repair or improve the world with an act of kindness.’  I love the idea of repairing the world by mending, to view something as valuable enough to put it back together and make it usable again.”

Perhaps this renewal through “repairing the world by mending” is something of what the psalmist has in mind as the psalm concludes: “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.  Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, obedient to his spoken word.  Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers that do his will.  Bless the Lord, all his works, in all places of his dominion.  Bless the Lord, O my soul.”

Look for the Image of God in Others

Merib-Baal’s life began with great promise.  The son of Jonathan, grandson of King Saul, Merib-Baal was in line to become king himself.  But at five years of age, when Saul and Jonathan died together in battle, Merib-Baal’s nurse feared for his life.  She took him into her arms and fled for his protection.  But he fell and became crippled for life.  Some years later, when his uncle Ishbaal was assassinated and the kingdom of Israel was won by David, fearing that the new king would do away with all who might have a legitimate claim to the throne of Saul, Merib-Baal went into deeper hiding, at the home of Machir, son of Ammiel, at Lo-debar (meaning “no pasture”).  Even his name was changed.  What a fall from prominence he experienced:

• From heir to the throne of Israel to hiding in a borrowed room in somebody else’s house, in a place where there is “no pasture”
• From the health and promise of affluent childhood to permanent disability
• From a position of prominence and high expectation to one who hides away in fear
• From the name Merib-Baal (“a striver against Baal”) to Mephibosheth (“reproach from the mouth” or “shame from the mouth”)

But out of love for Jonathan, David seeks to fulfill the covenant he had made with Jonathan to show kindness to Jonathan’s descendants.  David brings Mephibosheth into his home—the royal palace.  When Mephibosheth comes before David, he falls on his face before David, likely fearing that David may call for his execution.  But David promises to restore to Mephibosheth the family land, and he promises to give Mephibosheth a seat at his table for the rest of Mephibosheth’s life. 

In reply, Mephibosheth asks, “What is your servant that you should look upon a dead dog such as I?” 

After decades of living in hiding, with broken dreams and a broken body, Mephibosheth had begun to believe the message of his name.  He sees himself as damaged good.  He sees himself as a person with no dignity.

A fable tells of an eagle egg placed in the nest of a prairie chicken.  The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.  All through his growing up, the young eagle thought he was a prairie chicken and did what the prairie chickens did.  He scratched in the dirt for seeds and insects to eat.  He clucked and cackled.  And he flew in a brief thrashing of wings and flurry of feathers, no more than a few feet off the ground, for that’s how prairie chickens fly.  Years passed, and the eagle grew.  One day, he saw a magnificent bird far above him in the cloudless sky, soaring with graceful majesty on the powerful wind currents.  It sailed through the sky with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.  “What a beautiful bird!” said the young eagle to his neighbors.  “What is it?”

“That’s an eagle—the chief of birds,” the neighbor clucked.  “But don’t give it a second thought; you could never be like him.”

The young eagle never gave it another thought.  He lived and he died thinking he was a prairie chicken. 

Beaten down for so long, Mephibosheth saw himself as lower than a prairie chicken.  He describes himself as “a dead dog,” which is worse than worthless.  A dead dog is rotting flesh that needs to be gotten rid of

Yet when David looks at Mephibosheth, he sees in Mephibosheth the image of Jonathan whom he loved.  On this basis, Mephibosheth’s fortunes are reversed again. 

• From a borrowed room in Lo-debar, where there is “no pasture,” he receives the inheritance of all the lands of his grandfather King Saul. 
• From hiding away in fear, he is given a permanent seat at David’s table
• From “Mephibosheth” (“reproach from the mouth”), he becomes the welcome guest in David’s home.
• From “a dead dog,” he becomes the recipient of David’s favor 

David sees in Mephibosheth the likeness of Jonathan whom he loved, so David treats Mephibosheth in keeping with his love for Jonathan.  Indeed, this is a good working understanding of mercy for us: Mercy has to do with seeing in others the likeness of God and loving others in keeping with the love we have for God.  In doing this, we may help some misguided eagles to discover their true worth.

God is Permanent & God is Good

Psalm 102 contrasts the fleeting nature of our lives with the permanence of God.  The psalmist declares, “My days pass away like smoke” (verse 3) and “My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass” (verse 11). 

But about God the psalmist states,

• “But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever; your name endures to all generations” (verse 12)
• “You whose years endure throughout all generations” (verse 24)
• “Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.  They will perish, but you endure.” (verses 24-25)
• “You are the same, and your years have no end” (verse 27)

It is good news for us that God is permanent, for belonging to God gives permanence to our lives.  After receiving notification of terminal cancer, James Gordon Gilkey shares, “I walked out to my home five miles from the center of the city.  There I looked at the river and the mountain that I loved, and then—as the twilight deepened—at the stars glimmering in the sky.  I said to them, ‘I may not see you many times more.  But, river, I shall be alive when you have ceased your running to the sea.  Mountain, I shall be alive when you have sunk down into the plain.  Stars, I shall be alive when you have fallen to the sea.’”

I got this far in writing this devotional then had to make a trip to the Emergency Room with the intense pain of a kidney stone.  It has now passed along to the bladder (and has possibly passed out of me by now), so the pain is gone.  I am grateful that such pain is not permanent and that God’s goodness is permanent!

Along that line, the other contrast that stands out to me in Psalm 102 is the contrast between our struggles and God’s care for us.

About his struggles, the psalmist shares,

• “Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress” (verse 2)
• “My heart is stricken and withered like grass; I am too wasted to eat my bread.  Because of my load groaning my bones cling to my skin” (verses 4-5) (It sounds like he may have had a kidney stone!)
• “For I eat ashes like bread, and mingle tears with my drink” (verse 9)

Yet God’s care for us prevails amidst our struggles.  Therefore, the psalmist cries out to God (and so do we): “Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you.  Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress.  Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call” (verses 1-2).

And the psalmist declares, “Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the Lord looked to the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die; so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem, when peoples gather together and kingdoms, to worship the Lord.”

In all of our struggles we have hope because God cares for us, and his care is permanent!

Access to Mercy

An obsession with protecting one’s honor can become a tyrant in one’s life, driving a person to acts of vengeance to retaliate for perceived slights.  We encounter the fixation with vengeance early in the Bible.  In the fourth chapter of Genesis, Lamech boasts to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, listen to what I say: I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me.  If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold.”  Here is the earliest example of a person taking the law into his own hands, resulting in indiscriminate killing.

In the earliest societies, if a person was harmed or killed, the closest relative would become the “avenger of blood,” whose role it was to pursue vengeance.  A.H. Godbey comments, “There is a mere impulse of the human animal to strike back when struck; the disposition to cherish the memory of an injury, and to avenge it at the first opportunity…. Primitive vengeance is noted for being entirely disproportionate to the original offense, and it remains so till a tolerably definite social order has become established…. The savage man would fain torture his enemy to death for a trivial injury.  But the friends of this aggressor would have him go scot-free, if possible.  The result of the contention is eventually to establish the law that the aggressor shall be treated just as his victim was.  The one faction will allow no more, the opposing clan will accept no less.” 

Throughout the ancient Middle East, this demand of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth became the law.  Whatever damage was inflicted by one person to another would be paid in return to the one who caused the damage.  But where does that lead us? 

A.H. Godbey tells of a famous court case in Turkey many years ago where a man was charged with murder when he fell out of an upper window and landed on and killed a man who happened to be walking by under the window.  The son of the man who died brought charges in court against the man who had fallen out of the window.  The court decided in favor of the dead man’s son.  According to Godbey, “The son was to go to the same upper window; the accused was to stand beneath; and the son was to fall upon him and kill him.”

The prevailing law in the Middle East provided no differentiation between accident and intent.  It was a simple mathematical formula: If a tooth was knocked out, a tooth was required in retribution.  If a life was taken, a life was demanded in return.

However, the God we meet in the Bible is a God who looks not merely at the mathematical formula for payback, but who looks into the hearts of people.  For this reason, even before the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land, God instructed the people to set aside certain cities in the land as Cities of Refuge, where a person who was responsible for an accidental death could flee to for safety from the avenger of blood.  These cities of refuge could save the life of one who would be hunted down vengefully for an accidental death, and they would save the soul of one who was feeling driven toward revenge.

Martin Luther King, Jr., observed, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.  Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it…. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.  Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”  Cities of refuge were God’s means of establishing opportunities for light rather than darkness throughout the nation. 

God initiated this means of mercy, then he gave the invention to his people to implement and maintain.  God made sure that his people were actively involved in the provision of mercy.  It began with the allotment of six cities in scattered locations throughout the nation so that no one was ever too far away from the opportunity for mercy.  Six cities of refuge meant that half of the 12 tribes gave up valuable land to the Levites for the establishment of these cities.  The cities were built on high ground so that they could be seen even from a great distance.  The opportunity for mercy should always be in sight of the one who needs it.  Notably, the only roads that Scripture commanded God’s people to build were roads to the cities of refuge.  To make sure that the cities could be found easily, signposts were erected at frequent intervals, pointing in the direction of the city of refuge, bearing the word Miklat (“Refuge”).  By God’s directive, it was the community’s responsibility to assure that anyone in need of mercy had unencumbered access to the place of mercy.  God requires of us that we give people access to God’s mercy.

When a person who had killed another came to a city of refuge, it was the responsibility of the community to give ear to the one seeking mercy.  Joshua 20:4 states, “The slayer shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city and explain the case to the elders of that city.”  Verse 6 adds, “The slayer shall remain in that city until there is a trial before the congregation.”  A vengeful heart is quick to shut its ears to one who has done wrong.  A merciful heart is willing to listen.  God designed into the function of the cities of refuge a listening to the one who seeks refuge. 

Listening was not a guarantee of rescue or of acceptance, yet it provided an open door for that possibility.  Abigail Gilbert stresses, “If a man fled to the city, his case was heard at the gate by the elders within the city.  If they found him guilty, he wasn’t allowed inside, and was instead turned over to the avenger of blood to be killed.  The city of refuge was simply there to protect the right of due process and to make sure no offending man was ‘cut down’ before his case was heard by the congregation.” 

The city of refuge guaranteed that a person’s story could be heard before judgment was inflicted.  Mercy requires of us that we provide opportunity for a person to be heard.  Mercy requires of us that we listen.

A Psalm that Calls Us to Integrity

Psalm 101 expresses the psalmist’s commitment to personal integrity: “I will study the way that is blameless.  When shall I attain it?  I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is base” (verses 2-3). 

When we grapple with the call to live with integrity, the question raised in verse 2 is critical: “When shall I attain it?”

Reflecting on such a question, Jim Long writes

“Squinting through this book of his, I see something that shouldn’t have surprised me at all, but did;

rather like awakening in a cold sweat out of a ghastly nightmare.

I find something so logical, so predictable,

that it takes me off guard in startled shock, confirming as true

something that has been hideously inevitable all along:

God is good.  Perfect.

And his expectations of me arch high above my ability to deliver.

God is good.  I am not.

And he doesn’t appreciate the disparity.

He’s into goodness and won’t tolerate grungy morals.

I hardly expected my search for an inspiringly clear picture of God

to lead me back to a discouragingly clear picture of myself.

I hardly expected it, and yet, I fully expected it.

Always, I have been aware of my shortcomings.

No one has had to coax me into acknowledging my moral glitches.

What seems obvious to me now has always seemed obvious:

the more I strive to be good the more elusive goodness seems.

But to be faced again with my moral badness by looking at God’s moral strength

is a conundrum I lack the patience to noodle through.

And yet this frustration of wanting to be good drives me.

‘Be holy,’ the stellar writer says, ‘because I am holy.’

He might just as well say: ‘I am something that you will never be, can never be;

now, get on with the task of being it!’

Or, since he so enjoys injecting me with the frustration of the impossible,

he could have said: ‘Walk on water!  But shoes with floats don’t count.’….

As I read between the lines he’s written

the moral mystery seems to unravel.

If God’s lips seem to curl at the corners into a faint smile as he urges me on toward the impossible,

it may be because he plans to offer his moral strength at the very moment he shows me my moral weakness.

He helps me improve, but also makes up the vast difference between what I am and what he expects me to be;

he covers my blunders with free-flowing forgiveness.

But if I didn’t first see my weakness,

I might never accept his strength.

So he doesn’t skewer me with it either.

In the face of such undeserved kindness,

I see the most complete picture of this flawless friend.

And even a sky-sized mural cannot contain it!

As we face the call to holiness and our own failures at achieving holiness, our hope is in the help we receive from the indwelling Spirit of Christ and the promise of Christ’s forgiveness.

Nevertheless, God Clothed Them in Honor

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines mercy as “compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender.”  Tim Challies describes mercy as “God extending patience to those who deserve to be punished.”

The opportunity for mercy comes up early in the Bible.  The first two chapters of the Bible provide two beautiful accounts of creation.  But by the third chapter of the Bible, the beauty of creation is deeply marred by the sin of Adam and Eve.

In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard tells a story that provides an accurate image of sin:

“A couple of summers ago I was walking along the edge of the island to see what I could see in the water, and mainly to scare frogs…. At the end of the island I noticed a small green frog.  He was exactly half in and half out of the water.  He didn’t jump; I crept closer…. And just as I looked at him, he slowly crumpled and began to sag.  The spirit vanished from his eyes as if snuffed.  His skin emptied and drooped; his very skull seemed to collapse and settle like a kicked tent.

“He was shrinking before my eyes like a deflating football.  I watched the taut, glistening skin on his shoulders ruck, rumple, and fall.  Soon, part of his skin, formless as a pricked balloon, lay in floating folds like bright scum on top of the water; it was a monstrous and terrible thing…. An oval shadow hung in the water behind the drained frog; then the shadow glided away.  The frog skin bag started to sink.

“I had read about the water bug, but never seen one.  ‘Giant water bug’ is really the name of the creature, which is an enormous, heavy-bodied brown beetle.  It eats insects, tadpoles, fish, and frogs.  Its grasping forelegs are mighty and hooked inward.  It seizes a victim with these legs, hugs it tight, and paralyzes it with enzymes injected during a vicious bite.  That one bite is the only bite it ever takes.  Through the puncture shoots the poison that dissolves the victim’s muscles and bones and organs—all but the skin—and through it the giant water bug sucks out the victim’s body, reduced to a juice.” 

Sin works in much the same way in us.  It injects a poison into us that sucks the life out of us.  No wonder David moans in Psalm 32 about the consequence of sin: “My bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.  For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer.” 

The poison injected through sin is shame, described by Jan Luckingham Fable as “an unrelenting feeling of not being wanted and of being unworthy of being wanted…. The shamed person believes, at some level, that she—or he—should not exist, that she is a worthless, defective and empty human being…. Excessive shame is a prison.  It keeps a person caged in feelings of worthlessness, self-hatred, and even despair.”

A superficial reading of Genesis 3 may give the impression that God wishes to imprison Adam and Eve in shame.  In verses 16-19, God impresses upon them the curses/consequences that result from their sin.  In verses 23-24, God drives them out of the Garden of Eden.  But there’s another verse that must be considered.  Verse 21 tells us, “And the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them.”.

The word used here to communicate that God clothed them is a term normally used in reference to a king dressing a favored subject in a robe of honor.  Though Adam and Eve sinned, their sin does not negate God’s basic stance toward them.  The One who shaped them into being and breathed life into their souls still comes to them to dress them in robes that he has made for them as his favored subjects.

You can take it even further.  On the rare occasions when Scripture speaks of God dressing a person, in every occurrence other than Genesis 3:21, God is dressing a priest in the special robes of priestly office.  Indeed, the word translated in Genesis 3:21 as garments is the same word used for the tunic worn by the chief priest.  Though Adam and Eve were the world’s first sinners, they were still dressed by God as the world’s first priests, to stand before God on behalf of one another and on behalf of all who would follow them. 

The picture presented in Genesis 3 is not one of God merely throwing them some rags to cover up their nakedness.  It is a picture of God covering their shame with a handmade (God-made) robe of honor so that they may serve God as honored subjects and priests. Their sin was met by the incredible mercy of God!

Rejoice: We Belong to the Loving God

Psalm 100 is a psalm of gratitude and a psalm of rejoicing.

The grateful rejoicing is expressed in verses 1-2 and verse 4: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.  Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing…. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise.  Give thanks to him, bless his name.”

The reasons for the grateful rejoicing are expressed in verses 3 and 5: “Know that the Lord is God.  It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture…. For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.”

The reason why believers can make a practice of grateful rejoicing is that we belong to the God who is good, whose “steadfast love endures forever”—we “are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” 

Many years ago, John Gilmour reported that while he was walking in a little village one day, he came across an old Irishman selling lids, kettles and saucepans.  Gilmour greeted the man, “Good morning!  How is business today?”

“Oh,” the man replied, “I cannot complain.”

Gilmour remarked, “What a grand thing it is to be saved!”

The old man looked intently at him and replied, “I know something better than that.”

“Better than being saved?  I would like to know what that is.”

With a warm smile, the old man responded, “The constant companionship of the One who saved me, Sir.”

We have reason for grateful rejoicing, because we have the constant companionship of the God whose steadfast love endures forever.  “We are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

Jesuit Priest Pedro Arrupe put it this way: “More than ever, I find myself in the hands of God.  This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth.  But now there is a difference: the initiative is entirely with God.  It is, indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands!”

With the psalmist, we can “make a joyful noise to the Lord,” worshiping the Lord “with gladness,” when we know that “we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” and that “his steadfast love endures forever.”

God Welcomes the Rejected

The book of Acts tells the great story of how God grew the early church.  Acts 8 reports the account of a tremendous evangelistic campaign in the city of Samaria.  The key person behind this evangelistic success was Philip, one of the Christian church’s first deacons.  So, when verse 26 informs us that an angel of the Lord came to Philip and said, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza,” I anticipate that God is sending Philip to a bigger city to lead an even greater evangelistic campaign.  But God has something else in mind.  God sends Philip to talk to just one person—one very unlikely person.  God has arranged for Philip to have a rendezvous with an Ethiopian eunuch. 

Verse 27 tells us that this eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, but he likely had trouble fulfilling his wish.  Rachel Held Evans points out, “As a eunuch, this man would have been strictly prohibited from even entering temple grounds, much less participating in its rituals (Leviticus 21:20; Deuteronomy 23:1).  He was a sexual and ethnic minority, and as such would have been totally excluded from the religious community in Jerusalem, even if he believed in Israel’s God.”  Second century Assyrian writer Lucian called eunuchs “monstrous, alien to human nature.” 

This eunuch had surely experienced much rejection throughout his life.  And much rejection causes deep injury to a person’s soul.  Clare Foran states, “There is…evidence that psychological damage results when people feel excluded over long periods of time.  ‘When people are ostracized day in and day out, their ability to regain a sense of belonging becomes depleted,’ said Kip Williams, a Purdue University professor who studies the impact of being ignored and excluded.  ‘Eventually, people become depressed, helpless, and alienated as a feeling of worthlessness sets in.’” (“The Very Real Pain of Exclusion” The Atlantic, December 9, 2015).

But this is the one person to whom God sends Philip as the eunuch is returning home from Jerusalem.

Even before Philip arrives, it seems that God was already reaching out to the eunuch, for when Philip reaches his carriage, the eunuch is reading aloud the words of the prophet Isaiah. 

Rachel Held Evans comments, “[T]his religious outcast, this man who was thought to be in a state of perpetual uncleanliness, had gotten his hands on a sacred scroll and found a passage from the prophet Isaiah that resonated profoundly with his own experience: ‘He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth.  In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.  Who can speak of his descendants?  For his life was taken from the earth’” (Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, p. 38).

It makes sense that the eunuch would be drawn to this passage of Scripture (Isaiah 53:7-8).  The eunuch asks Philip who is being described in this passage, for he wants to know who in Scripture has experienced what has been so common in the eunuch’s own life. 

Philip tells the eunuch that the prophet is speaking of Jesus, and he proceeds to explain “the good news about Jesus.”  To the eunuch, the good news about Jesus, from this passage and more, is that Jesus identifies with the eunuch’s pains and sorrows.  Like the eunuch, Jesus had been maligned, misunderstood, rejected, humiliated, deprived of justice, pushed aside, and physically abused.  Whatever grief the eunuch has experienced, Jesus has experienced it too.  They know how each other feels. 

Others may have disdained and rejected this eunuch, but God lovingly pursued this eunuch.  An angel of the Lord sent Philip to the road the eunuch was traveling.  The Spirit of God commanded Philip to go the eunuch’s carriage and join it.  And at the invitation of the eunuch Philip got in and sat beside the eunuch.  At the right time, Philip baptized the eunuch into the family of Christ.  The one who had been rejected is now deeply welcomed. 

Most likely, as Philip opened up the Scriptures to the eunuch, he read a bit further in Isaiah: “Do not let the foreigner joined to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will surely separate me from his people’; and do not let the eunuch say, ‘I am just a dry tree.’  For thus says the Lord: To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off” (Isaiah 56:3-5).

By choosing to send Philip not to the next great evangelistic campaign but to this estranged eunuch, God reached out not only to the eunuch but to many, many others throughout the centuries who have felt deeply connected to this eunuch.  In his book Transforming: The Bible & the Lives of Transgender Christians, Austen Hartke shares what this has meant in his own life: “I was floored…. I felt an immediate connection to the eunuch and the foreigner.  Their fear of separation, fear of being forgotten, fear of being kept out of God’s family—all based on identities as unchosen as the place of their birth and as intrinsic as the shape of their body.  Their fears were my fears too.  Yet here was God, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, quieting those fears and promising an unequivocal welcome” (p. 90).