Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: September 24, 2005
Good Sabbath
September 24, 2005
Rainbow--"that gracious thing made up of tears and light." (Colleridge)
Tears and fears combine as Katrina is followed by Rita. We see the approach, are dazzled by the pattern of threatening chaos, are guided by the news - casters abandoning the mess called Iraq for the mess called hurricane. We learn about what we didn't know as we learn more about human nature, that oft-brave non-equal of madam Fate and Nature. We see people at the worst and at their best; large families reunited into dwarfed rooms that become precious h o m e; huge traffic jams on modern highways overwhelmed by squadrons of cars as if rising to meet enemy hordes. People escape as poets reach for metaphors and Noah's ancestors wonder where is He and is God doing something He promised never to do again?
We live through history unrecognized by contemporaries who are living and creating it. History is no statistic--perhaps an accumulation sometimes--but rather the narrative of chaos as we witness it. When completely human we call it war; when it seems like God, we call it religious experience, for the spirit is always receptive to both miracle and sacrifice.
What is the difference in class when both are recipients of flood and danger, if each has a car, gasoline and an open road? When one does and politicians begin playing a blame-shame then inequality burdens humankind of all kind.
Martin Luther King said: “There are two challenges to America; the challenges of racism and poverty." One evolves into the other when we are too busy or too stupid to understand and attempt to erase each. First we need the attention and then the action devised by a togetherness that is all too rare, unfortunately.
We cannot understand the contradictions we are witnessing. We cannot comprehend how so much injustice and evil exist in a world created by One God who is omnipotent. How can we understand so much suffering, accidents, evil and chaos and still have faith in that God? We have heard that "vengeance is mine and I will make My goodness pass before thee". Which side of God is the real and which invented by the created? Is length of suffering God's test of faith or is the devil a separate force over which God has no control? How can that be unless it is. The unbelievable suffering of Job could not destroy his faith in his God: " Far be it from me that I should justify You, but I shall hold to my righteousness and will not let it go."
O God
We witness flood and wind
And power that TV shows
We share the suffering
Without the pain
Our feeling become human--
too often silenced--
But now ignited by images of reality.
As we long for silence again
so we can think on what You mean
and what it means
to we who are safe and dry.
Amen
So, another Sabbath appears, as if the rainbow of each week, and so it is, but only if appreciated and shared by those we love or learn to love. We must not care only during flood and famine, or we will suffer them always--until Noah reappears.
sandy
