RESILIENT YET FRAGILE
Thursday, July 30, 2020
1Corinthians [GW] 2:4-13 I [Paul] didn't speak my message
with persuasive intellectual arguments. I spoke my message with a show of
spiritual power so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on
God's power. However, we do use wisdom to speak to those who are mature. It is
a wisdom that doesn't belong to this world or to the rulers of this world who
are in power today and gone tomorrow. We speak about the mystery of God's wisdom.
It is a wisdom that has been hidden, which God had planned for our glory before
the world began. Not one of the rulers of this world has known it. If they had,
they wouldn't have crucified the Lord of glory. But as Scripture says: "No
eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined the things that God
has prepared for those who love him." God has revealed those things to us
by his Spirit. The Spirit searches everything, especially the deep things of
God. After all, who knows everything about a person except that person's own
spirit? In the same way, no one has known everything about God except God's
Spirit. Now, we didn't receive the spirit that belongs to the world. Instead,
we received the Spirit who comes from God so that we could know the things
which God has freely given us. We don't speak about these things using
teachings that are based on intellectual arguments like people do. Instead, we
use the Spirit's teachings. We explain spiritual things to those who have the
Spirit.
There’s this
tough little ocean critter that is super alert and can travel 800 body lengths
in one second. (It should be easier now than when I weighed 250, but I’m not
sure I can travel 8 body lengths in a second these days!) The copepod is one of
the fastest creatures in God’s creation, making it able to escape most hungry
jaws. It cannot however escape the slimy maw of one of the slowest creatures on
earth.
The Mnemiopsis
leidyi, “jellyfish” to most of us, without brain or sight, is one the slowest
creatures in nature. So slow that the copepod can’t sense it approaching and
winds up being part of the creepy creeping critters’ 10 times its body weight
daily diet. (My choice of words is result of being stung [plural] as a boy
while enjoying the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.)
These jellyfish
have been and continue to be increasing in population and are difficult to
eradicate. Where they thrive they have interrupted the food chain and
devastated fisheries. In some seafood dependent areas this could be like
Ireland’s potato famine years ago resulting in sickness, disease, death, and
human population shifts that stress or overburden neighboring local resources. In
the 1980’s the once abundant Black Sea anchovy fishery was ravaged. Other areas
are now being effected.
Life is durable
and yet vulnerable. Consider our body. Consider our mind. Consider our spirit.
All can only be
kept in optimum possible health with constant alertness and movement, and even
then we may be overcome by creeper or creepiness. And in spite of our best
efforts eventually we waste and die anyway. (Heb.9:27)
There is but one workable
escaping presently and future: Trusting God now in this dangerous environment.
(Jn.6:27; 2Cor.1:22; Eph.1:13; 4:30)
God says "At
the right time I heard you. On the day of salvation I helped you." Listen,
now is God's acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation!” (GW 2Cor.6:2)
EBB4
No comments:
Post a Comment