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| Image by K.J. Bax |
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A GREETING
I will bless the Lord at all times;
praise for God shall continually be in my mouth.
(Psalm 34:1)
A READING
The people then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ They then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
(John 2:18-22 var)
MUSIC
A MEDITATIVE VERSE
My times are in your hand.
(Psalm 31:15a)
A POEM
Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.
When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I'd watch the face, how the mouth
has to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.
And for all, I'd know more -- the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
like a light.
- "Next Time," by Mary Oliver
VERSE OF THE DAY
The one who lives for ever created the whole universe.
(Sirach 18:1)
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| Image by Earth Science |
Yesterday we looked at what it might mean to 'sacrifice' more of our time in prayer and service to God. In today’s devotion, we consider time itself and specifically how time passed in the creation of the world. In our contemporary conversation, there is sometimes a controversial polarity between those who believe in time as described in the biblical story, and those who use scientific methods to imagine a much older scientific time.
While some people find it helpful to hear the story of Creation literally, there have long been theologians who believe that the biblical time described in Genesis cannot be bound by days and years — and even these folks have a great variety of theory about it! Even so, it is possible to hear the biblical story as holding a more complex understanding of time than it seems on the surface. Looking at biblical passages more closely is not unlike staring at geological formations: after a while it's possible to see the deeper strata and layers in what is being described.
The very first word of our bible, ‘bereshit,’ is a compound of two Hebrew words: ‘in,’ and ‘beginning.’ There is technically no definite article in the word, no ‘the.’ So, ‘in a beginning.’ The dawn of Creation, the unfolding of the voids of darkness and light, of seas and heavens, are at a dawn of time that is unspecified and stretches over unmappable markers of time. Even St. Augustine, who lived in the fourth century CE, commented on God’s time in Genesis as representing a scope outside of anything we know or can imagine. Time itself arrived as God began to create it, he believed, but it is beyond human capacity to imagine what that timeline was.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus says he will tear down the Temple and raise it again in three days. The allusion is to his own death and resurrection: Jesus wlil replace the temple. The unique nature of the resurrection, however, is that we no longer need to measure temples in terms of eras of time. The risen Jesus is with us forever.
In our own lives, one of the great challenges of the climate emergency is how it challenges our sense of forever time. Instead, we hear that certain aspects of species life and the wellness of the planet itself are now on timers with tipping points, beyond which there will be irreparable damage. We hear of glaciers melting that have been with us for thousands of years, and the collapse of ecosystems. While time itself unfolded exponentially in a way that cannot really be measured, human beings are capable of losing parts of our world within decades of years. How do we reconcile these things?
One way is to keep on living into what it means to be building the realm of God. The only antidote to that which is disappearing is to build up relationships (including our relationship with the land and nature), love one another, and give ourselves to the work of being in community. We generate life, however we can.
One of the great gifts of God to us is imagination. Our imagination is part of how we are made in the image of God. Sometimes we have to use our imagination, to see what is plainly before us, and sometimes we have to imagine our way to a new place.
How can we use our creativity to make change? How can we imagine our way into a more sustainable future?
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A STORY OF ENDURANCE
Deep time, is a scientific principle that emerged out of the research of an eighteenth-century Scottish farmer and geologist named James Hutton, who made a discovery on the eastern Scottish coastline of strata of rocks that revealed formation taking place over billions of years. It marked a profound change not only in the understanding of geology, but in the wider sciences as well. He was a hobby scientist, with no previous education, who had nonetheless understood the principle of 'uncomformity,' in which inconsistencies in rock demonstrate enormous time gaps. This video offers a glimpse of how that happened.
(It is twelve minutes.)
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LC† Awakened by the Spirit is a project of Lutherans Connect, supported by the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Centre for Spirituality and Media at Martin Luther University College. To receive the devotions by email, write to lutheransconnect@gmail.com. The devotional pages are written and curated by Deacon Sherry Coman, with support and input from Pastor Steve Hoffard, Catherine Evenden and Henriette Thompson. Join us on Facebook, and on Twitter. Lutherans Connect invites you to make a donation to the Ministry by going to this link on the website of the ELCIC Eastern Synod and selecting "Lutherans Connect Devotionals" under "Fund". Devotions are always freely offered, however your donations help support the ongoing work.
Thank you and peace be with you!