Texas Giant, Phoneix Floods, CA Wildfires

The Texas Giant Roller Coaster

"Even now, O Lord, while we are placed among things that are passing away, 
help us to cleave to those things which endure,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen" 


The rash of tragic events across the country has certainly grabbed headlines--the woman who falls from the coaster, the sudden floods in Phoenix and then raging wildfires in California.  They play into the deepest fears of the psyche--we have no firm grip on this world.  Surely we don't go through the day expecting these same events to happen to us.

Phoenix Floods Wash Everything Away!

 That's not the point.  But take Camus or Sartre--or even Jesus and the parable of the flood washing away the house--and the same point is there.  Where and how do we get a grip on things?  There is the sense that we lack any permanence in ourselves, no hold on life, or what the Harvard Business Review calls "Sky Hooks"  (because "the earth moves under our feet" as the song goes!).

CA Wildfire--Is there ever enough retardent? 

Handle of the World

There’s no place in the world,

like the Ship Ahoy dock,

the floating anchor,

that ties me to the one place,

where I hold the handle of the world,

against currents of tide and wind,

that threaten to sweep me away.

When will I learn the secrets,

Of eider ducks who swim,

with the stream without a paddle,

Or gulls who fly like white kites,

without moving their wings?

Perhaps it is enough just to let go!

 

Forgive my ruminations! 

 The parable of the house that stands against the flood is not that it has within itself a foundation all of it own.  Or, that the Christian faith is an insurance policy against the floods. Far from it.  In Christ, the the floods still come, He is our foundation, or as Tillich says, "the ground of our being."  We cannot fall out of Christ ultimately--we are in his everlasting arms, as the old spiritual sings.