Christmas
December 30, 2015

 Scripture Reading: Psalm 147:12-20

Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem!
   Praise your God, O Zion!
For he strengthens the bars of your gates;
   he blesses your children within you.
He grants peace within your borders;
   he fills you with the finest of wheat.
He sends out his command to the earth;
   his word runs swiftly.
He gives snow like wool;
   he scatters frost like ashes.
He hurls down hail like crumbs—
   who can stand before his cold? –Psalm 147:12-17

As I sat down to write this morning, I truly was not ready for a Psalm that praises God because of God’s control of the weather. Oklahoma was besieged by the weather over the past several days, which is now moving toward the east coast including blizzards and floods, tornados and black ice. I awoke this morning at 5:28 am being rocked in my bed by a 4.3 earthquake whose epicenter was ten or so miles north of me. Felt the 3.5 aftershock too. While some believe we are being punished for what they construe as our sinful behaviors, others believe that we are suffering from our own failed care of the earth causing global warming and greed-driven wastewater disposal processes that cause earthquakes.

In both cases our priorities are off point. We are called to live a life driven by love and such a way of being demands moral imperatives of respect for ourselves and others in all aspects of life. We have never, however, been given the assignment of assessing ultimate judgment on ourselves or others and certainly not making our judgments litmus tests for our love. I do not think it is possible to love the person and hate what we perceived to be their sin. We must work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in [us], enabling [us] both to will and to work for his good pleasure. (Philippians 2:12b-13) And we must allow others the same opportunity while loving them completely just as they are and trusting that God will use our love in God’s work with both us and them.

And in like manner the need to establish blame never solves a problem and may impede identifying causes. Global warming and earthquakes are now realities. If identifying causes and implementing changes in our behaviors are necessary toward our meeting God’s charge to care for the earth, we need to do so with all due haste. It will require all of us to repent from the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed and to learn new, more responsible ways to live our praise to the Lord.

Prayer: Lord, order our lives so that our acts of love and care of the earth may being pure praise to you. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized 
Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council 
of Churches of Christ in the United States of American. Used by permission. All rights 
reserved.