Roaring God

I've just spent a wonderful holiday week-end enjoying one of God's geological masterpieces - Ontario's Muskoka.

Let this serve as prelude to my continuing comments (see last Friday's post) on Psalm 104.

Enjoy!





The first glimpse of Earth-maker in Psalm 104 is a Home-builder, radiating sunlight. Then, a tender mother swaddling her new creation with a blanket of Ocean.
Then dramatically . . . a Commander snapping fingers, ordering Ocean to retreat allowing Land to rise.

Continents lift like blue whales breaching, rising out of the ocean depths. Sea-water falls away; streams flow down mountains – as water always does, seeking out the lowest places on the planet.

Photo credit: "Irish Cliffs of Moher" Pauline Watson, Lethbridge, Alberta



This psalm was ancient Israel’s hymn celebrating Creation (see sidebar text) – and there’s nothing tame about its vision. God roars a rebuke and Nature obeys in a powerful tectonic drama. These are not impersonal geological mechanisms, but Nature responding to its creator’s command, like an orchestra following the conductor’s baton.

Geology is a fascinating record of this process of earth-formation – the interaction of rock, heat, water and time. The Hebrew vision captures the energy and drama of these processes, but it also identifies the maker as an Artist with life-creating, life-protecting purpose and determination.

Notice how God uses creative power for constructive life-supporting purposes. God’s rebuke is not timid, nor haughty or defensive as human rebukes often are. Rather, it is empowering and developmental. Oceans and rivers exult in God’s initiative and ingenuity; they sustain life on our planet and enable living things to flourish.

I wonder … what we can learn from watching how God works – because I'm convinced that our part in creation is not just to be admiring spectators.
I wonder … how might God’s rebuke might sound in response to the Gulf Oil spill and other ecological travesties ?
I wonder … what I can do today to help Earth-maker’s purpose to flourish?

Psalm 104 - Part Two