I've had a post rattling around in my head since the beginning of the week but have lacked the "finishing touch" to write it. And maybe that is because it doesn't have a finishing point. The idea has continued to develop due to programs I've been watching and people I have been talking with....and it won't end here....it simply can't. It is too big.
I finished reading Job this week. Toward the end of the book, after Job and his friends have had their say, God speaks to Job "from the whirlwind" and says to "brace yourself like a man". Then God lets loose on him. God begins an inquisition of Job unlike anything else seen in Scripture.
Imagine this thunderous voice of God telling you to prepare yourself for what He is about to say....bellowing out from a whirlwind nonetheless. What does God say?
Where were you when the foundation of the earth was laid?
Where were you when I told the sea it could only come this far?
When I adorned the earth with clouds?
Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place?
Have you entered the storehouses of snow?
Do you send lightning bolts on their way?
Who provides food for the raven when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?
Read Job Chapter 38 here: http://www.biblica.com/bible/verse/index.php?q=Job%2038&niv=yes&v_mode=&t_mode
This cross-examination goes on by God for a few chapters and Job readily admits he is not worthy to dare even answer. God clearly shows here that He is the Creator and that His Creation superseded human kind.
Have you been watching the series by Ken Burns on the National Parks? I tried counting up in my head the number of National Parks I have visited, even from my youth, and have come up with a handful. Yellowstone, the Tetons, Acadia, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, and Glacier stand out in my mind. I think I was most surprised, and maybe I shouldn't have been, to learn that these were hotly debated political battles raged upon pristine landscapes by greedy men.
And then I became familiar this week with a similar story involving our Indiana Dunes and the political deception and corporate greed that filtered into the debate that led to the loss of the lion's share of the dunes, particularly those most ecologically important.
It seems that the scar to Creation is due to the sinful nature of man. My wife read me a timely passage from Rob Bell's book Sex God which says "How you treat the creation reflects how you feel about the Creator." The Apostle Paul states in Romans 8:22 "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."
Why? In watching the National Parks series it becomes clear that particularly in these United States we reduce everything to a dollarable figure. There is nothing sacred that isn't weighed against its commercial value. And while I am discussing creation, I believe this is also true of our history and even those things not physical, but innate to us including our integrity. Yes, even integrity has a price which is most evident in the explosions of corporate and political fraud today.
Well, I promise to not make this a 6 part series like Burns, but I do intend to dig deeper soon.
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