This season we looked at six stories of creation in the Bible and considered what we are to learn from each.
What I saw in these stories were these reminders:
- We are not God – The sun does not rise or set on our command.
- All of creation is sacred – every piece is worthy of our respect.
- We are to care for the people and natural world as God would.
And if you’re thinking that we knew this, might I remind us that we haven’t always acted this way. And a scripture passage we may need to be reminded of is: “Pride comes before disaster, and arrogance before a fall.” – Proverbs 16:18.
Our Psalm for today is believed to be an Entrance Liturgy both for what it says and a larger pattern with the Psalms beginning with Psalm 15, which is also an entrance liturgy.
When we look at the structure of this psalm, we see three-parts:
V 1-2 – Declaring God as the Creator
V 3-6 – Liturgy for humanity to enter God’s holy space
V 7-10 Liturgy for God to meet us there
Of particular interest is that this psalm, although it calls for being “clean” and “pure,” is looking for moral cleanliness and purity to come before God rather than physical – which was the norm in the ancient world. It was issues with blood or disease that made one “unclean” and therefore, unable to enter the Temple.
The “pure heart” is not referring to emotions but to one’s state of will. Is one coming with the best intentions? Pause for a moment and consider why you came today. Because in my experience of church over my lifetime, people have come for many reasons that had nothing to do with God, including me in my younger years.
Our scripture from Genesis is near the end of the story, where we hear God remind us of all that God has done, and God’s proclamation that it was all very good! I hear this as God inviting us to be grateful for all God has given us.
And yet, as we discussed last week, in Genesis Ch. 3 we weren’t grateful – we wanted more – we wanted what we felt we were denied.
Could this be pointing to our tendency to play the victim? Is this why some of us needed a Savior, different from God? Well, I must confess that I tend to feel like a victim. I learned it well growing up, and I have lived through some situations where it felt justified. However, I can’t get stuck there because then I am surviving rather than thriving. Rather than focus on what we don’t have or get, God wants us to consider all that we do – AND be grateful to God for it all!
We also tend to think that we have earned it, and give ourselves credit rather than God! This leaves us with inflated egos. There are always contemporary examples of this behavior!
So we are going to take a few minutes in silence to reflect on what we are truly grateful for. Try to think more deeply than we did during the Children’s Time. For what are you grateful in the deepest parts of your being?
I will begin by reading Psalm 46:10: “Be still – and know – that I am – God. Be still – and know – that I am. Be still – and know. Be still.”
So what are the things for which we are grateful? Anything different than before?
But what is even more challenging is to be grateful in challenging or even terrible circumstances.
For this, I leave you with the wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “I’ve had a remarkable life. I seem to be in such good places at the right time. You know, if you were to ask me to sum my life up in one word, gratitude.”
May it be so. Amen.
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