Hydrogen Atom as Icon

“As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.” Psalm 17:15

The longing to see God permeates Scripture. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:8) Søren Kierkegaard built his book Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing around the idea that if the only thing you actually want is to see God, you will see God. Jesus also told his disciples, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) Of course, The Ten Commandments prohibit physical images of God as idols. (Exodus 20:4; Deuteronomy 5:8). So this is not a physical sight but a spiritual longing and vision.

The Eastern Orthodox understanding of icons is not that they are pictures to look at as though they were images of God, but as windows to look through to perceive spiritual realities that cannot be seen physically. As I contemplated Psalm 17:5 and my passion to see God, I thought that perhaps the hydrogen atom might be an icon through with I can see God’s simplicity and unlimited possibilities.

One rather simplistic insight of the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe is that the first atoms created in the Big Bang were hydrogen, one proton and one electron. The postulate is that all of the principles and forces necessary for the diverse complexity of the universe is embedded in the simplicity of the hydrogen atom. In my own lifetime I remember reading some scientific skepticism about the Big Bang Theory because it was too much like Genesis 1:3, “Let there be light,” since the presupposition was gradualism rather than an instantaneous event. But as the Big Bang Theory gained both wider scientific and popular acceptance, some suggested, perhaps tongue in cheek, that God is/was a hydrogen atom (or that a hydrogen atom is/was God). This was before the Higgs Boson was nicknamed the God particle. Theologically, the Ten Commandments would certainly condemn such as equation as idolatrous.

However, as I meditated on Psalm 17:15, I considered the possibility of looking through the hydrogen atom as a window into a deep spiritual reality, rather than looking at the hydrogen atom as though it was equivalent or interchangeable with God. Psalms 19:7; 116:6; 119:130 speak of God’s special care for simple people (in contrast to Proverbs that uses simple to contrast with wise people). When I find my mind (and soul) getting boggled by what I cannot grasp, I have often turned to Psalm 131:2, “I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother,” and envisioned myself curled up on God’s lap content as in a mother’s embrace.

The utter simplicity of the hydrogen atom – one proton, one electron – shows me this simplicity of God. God doesn’t expect me to understand everything but to rest in Divine simplicity. But if, as the Big Bang Theory proposes, all of the unlimited and complex diversity of the universe rose of such simplicity, can I not perceive that out of God’s simplicity grows an ever expanding profundity that will always be beyond all human explanation, certainly beyond me. As I reflect on this, awe prompts worship to arise from me to be lifted toward God.

This meditation that began with and returns to Psalm 17:15 suggests that as I contemplate the juxtaposition of God’s simplicity and unlimited possibility I am getting a spiritual glimpse of the face of God.

Teach Us To Pray

Pictures from 2nd and 3rd century catacombs of women leading prayer in worship. (above and below)

Eastern Orthodox icon detail of woman leading prayer in worship.

The familiar version of The Lord’s Prayer comes from the middle of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9-13 KJV). We are less familiar with the version in Luke 11:2-4 where Jesus responded to his disciples’ request, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

While I am certainly not Jesus, many have recognized how important I believe prayer is for us as individual disciples of Jesus and for us together as a congregation. I have been asked in a variety of ways to teach how to pray. The prayer exercises I have planned for Lent are in response to those requests. I am making them available here for any who wish to use them.

Praying with Scripture

My simplest answer to the question, “How can I learn to pray?” is to pray with Scripture. When I was with Henri Nouwen at the Daybreak Community in Ontario nearly 23 years ago, he compared praying with Scripture to a cow chewing its cud, talking over a specific passage with God for a prolonged period to extract the maximum nutrition. I was interested to read in the January 21, 2015 issue of the Christian Century (p. 8), that the nuns of the Abby of St. Walberga in Colorado, who raise beef cattle, connect their cattle and their prayers. They say, “Praying with Scripture is like chewing your cud. All through the day we’re ruminating on it. We chew, chew, chew, swallow, regurgitate.”

I also like a different image from the 4^th century Desert Father Abba Poeman who said, “The nature of water is soft, that of stone is hard; but if a bottle is hung above the stone, allowing the water to fall drop by drop, it wears away the stone. So it is with the Word of God; it is sort and hour heart is hard, but those who open their hearts the Word of God often, open their hearts to the fear of God.” I like to think of this as God’s way of using Scripture to make my heart match the heart of Jesus.

If you want to learn to pray with Scripture, you must start by filling the reservoir of your heart with Scripture. It is not a matter of how much Scripture you can read through but how much of what you are reading gets into you. For over 30 years I have taken a week with just three passages (Hebrew Scripture, Epistle, Gospel from the Common Lectionary) and spend time with them every day. For about 45 years I have prayed through 5 Psalms a day, thus coming back to each of them once a month (the day’s date +30+30+30+30). At least once a week I devote substantial time to being silent in God’s presence with no agenda of my own. I just wait for the Holy Spirit to bring from the reservoir of Scripture in my heart an invitation to have a conversation with God.

The Lord’s Prayer

Jesus gave his disciples and us The Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4) as our basic starting point for learning to pray. I somehow doubt that he intended or expected it to be memorized and recited in private devotions and public worship (unless you consider his divine foreknowledge of what would happen centuries later was purposely included in what he was teaching his disciples at the time). Rather, he gave it as a model on which we could confidently build not just our individual prayers but our complete prayer lives. The Lord’s Prayer is remarkable for being amazingly simple, compact and comprehensive.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer considered The Lord’s Prayer to be the summation and climax of the Psalms. He explains this in The Cost of Discipleship, which is really a commentary on The Sermon on the Mount as instruction for practical spirituality and discipleship. In his less known little book, Psalms the Prayerbook of the Bible, Bonhoeffer suggests that as a boy growing up in a devout Jewish home, Jesus learned to pray from the Psalms, so that when he taught his disciples to pray he could condense the totality of the richness and depth of the prayers of God’s people through the generations into the exquisite nugget we know as The Lord’s Prayer.

If the Psalms are the reservoir from which The Lord’s Prayer is extracted, the prayers in the New Testament Epistles are their extension from the Hebrew community to the global community of the Church through the centuries. The Psalms express a profound longing for God. The prayers of the Epistles express an awesome awareness of God present and active among the people of the Church and the Church at work in an often hostile world.

Prayers from the Epistles

If you want to grow in your praying I recommend to you praying the prayers in the Epistles for this congregation. Perhaps take just one prayer a week. Read it slowly every day. Ask the Holy Spirit to enable you to pray in this same way for this congregation. I promise you far beyond your routine prayers asking for God’s blessing into spiritual territory that might even be a little scary.

·         Romans 1:8-10

·         1 Corinthians 1:4-9

·         Ephesians 1:15-23

·         Ephesians 3:14-21

·         Philippians 1:3-11

·         Colossians 1:3-14

·         1 Thessalonians 1:2-3

·         2 Thessalonians 1:11-12

These prayers confront us with what Annie Dillard asked in her 1982 book Teaching a Stone to Talk. “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? … The sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return.”

Prayer as Vocation

Weavings, the magazine for spiritual formation from the Upper Room, tells how Glenn Hinson, Professor Emeritus of Spirituality and Church History, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond, Virginia, visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky with a group of seminarians. They heard a talk by Thomas Merton on contemplation. One student asked Merton, “What is a smart fellow like you doing in a place like this?” Hinson expected a stiff response from Merton. Instead Merton said, “I am here because I believe in prayer. That is my vocation.” However the student took Merton’s response, Hinson said that it had never before occurred to him to think of prayer as a vocation.

Vocation is not what someone does to earn a living. Vocation is not someone’s career. Vocation is someone’s calling. The root word is the same as “vocal.” Vocation is to be about what you have been called for. As Christians, of course, we recognize God’s calling, but I believe everyone has a calling, even if they don’t follow it. Vocation for Christians is not about their jobs or their careers, though they may often mesh together. Christian vocation is not about those who are called to careers in ministries such as pastors, chaplains, missionaries, professors. Christian vocation is about God’s call to every Christian to live out the life of Jesus wherever they are and whatever they are doing.

We easily make the mistake of thinking that people with a prayer vocation are somehow giants who live in a rarified spiritual atmosphere. However, the great spiritual classics make clear what is taught in Scripture and lived by Jesus, that the vocation of prayer is lived out in the ordinary rhythms of life. Thomas ‘a Kempis’ The Practice of the Presence of God shows us the spiritual power he knew in the kitchen. Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s The Sacrament of the Present Moment shows us how to recognize God when we focus on what is now.

A Lenten Prayer Journey

I have come to deeply appreciate worship on Ash Wednesday with its emphasis on our spiritual frailty and mortality that sharpens the wonder of the resurrection. That evening we will begin our Lenten Wednesday evenings with an experience of the prayer of examen as we receive the ancient sign of imposed ashes. On the subsequent Wednesday evenings after enjoying your wonderful tradition of “Stone Soup Suppers,” I will guide you through a different prayer experience each week.

·         Ash Wednesday: Prayer of Examen

·         Lent 2: Praying the Four Points of the Compass

·         Lent 3: Praying with the Church through the Centuries

·         Lent 4: Praying for Healing and Wholeness

·         Lent 5: Praying Without Words

·         Lent 6: Praying with Scripture

Ash Wednesday: Prayer of Examen

Read Psalm 139:1-6, 23-24

Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home – Richard Foster

Precious Savior, why do I fear your scrutiny? Yours is an examen of love. Still, I am afraid … afraid of what may surface. Even so, I invite you to search me to the depths. So that I may know may myself – and you – in fuller measure. Amen.

             

Spiritual Exercises – Ignatius of Loyola

Pray silently to receive the grace for three things:

              First, that I may feel an interior knowledge of my sins and also an abhorrence of them.

              Second, that I may perceive the disorder in my actions, in order to detest them, amend myself, and put myself in order.

              Third, that I may have a knowledge of the world, in order to detest it and rid myself of all that is worldly and vain.

Imagine Christ our Lord suspended on the cross before you and converse with him. How is it that he, although he is the Creator, has come to make himself a human being? How is it that he has passed from eternal life to death here in time, and to die in this way for my sins?

Reflect on yourself and ask: What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I do for Christ?

Lent 2: Praying the Four Points of the Compass

Read Daniel 6:3-10

You may modify my pattern to match your experiences and relationships.

I start facing EAST, toward the rising sun. I pray the Lord’s Prayer and take one step forward. I thank God for a new day, review what I know is coming, ask for God’s guidance and release the day to Him. I pray for people I know who are east of me. Our son Jon and his family. My two of my nieces and their families. The folk I served at Central Christian Church, this congregation and in New Jersey. I pray for the people in government in Washington, for Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

Then I step back to the center, turn SOUTH and pray the Prayer of St. Francis. After stepping forward I pray for people I know south of me. The church I served in Duncanville. Southwest Good Samaritan Ministries. The people I got to know in Haiti and Honduras and our son Jon and his family know in Guatemala. News events taking place in Latin America.

I step back to the center, turn WEST and pray the L’Arche Prayer. I take a step west and pray for people I know west of me. My nephew serving with the Navy in Guam. The church I served in Odessa. Those I grew up with in California, friends in Colorado. I pray about people and events in Asia, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, Thailand and Burma. As I was giving thanks for the people in China who cared for our granddaughter Elizabeth for the first 15 months of her life and her biological parents.

Then I step back to the center, turn NORTH and pray the invocation and memorial prayers I typically use in the funeral liturgy. Those north of me whom I pray for include Candy’s Dad, our son David and his family, our niece and her family, the people of the churches we served in Illinois and Wisconsin, the people at the Daybreak community where we lived in Ontario.

After stepping back to the center, I face east again and reflect on having traced a cross with my steps, then I lift my hands and sing a hymn of praise to Christ.

Lent 3: Praying with the Church through the Centuries

The Great Thanksgiving from the classic liturgy of the Church offers wonderful guidance for group prayer that can be used individually as well.

Sursum Corda

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

We lift our hearts up to you and give thanks to you our Lord and our God. To give you praise is always and everywhere right and a good and joyful thing, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.

Thanksgiving

You are invited to speak aloud your thanksgivings in a word or two, and all will respond:

Lord, we give you thanks …

Sanctus

Therefore we praise you, joining our voices with Angels and Archangels and with all the company of heaven, who forever sing to the glory of your Name.

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

Confession

Oh holy God you see us as we are, and know our inmost thoughts. We confess that we are unworthy of your gracious care. We forget that all life comes from you and that to you all life returns. We have not always sought or done your will.

We have not lived as your grateful children, nor loved as Christ loved us. Apart from you, we are nothing. Only your grace can sustain us.

Lord, in your mercy, forgive us, heal us and make us whole. Set us free from our sin, and restore to us the joy of your salvation, now and forever, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Amen.

Assurance of Pardon

Hear the good news! Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ, and Christ died for us, Christ rose for us, Christ reigns in power for us, Christ prays for us. Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation. The old life has gone; a new life has begun. Know that in Christ you are forgiven and be at peace.

Memorial Acclamation

Great is the mystery of faith.

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

Intercessions

You are invited to speak aloud your requests in a few words, ending with:

For this we pray to the Lord:

and all will respond:

Lord, hear our prayer.

Let us pray for our world:

Let us pray for our nation:

Let us pray for our community:

Let us pray for Christ’s Church:

Let us pray for our congregation:

Let us pray for our families and friends:

Let us pray for ourselves:

Collect

Almighty God, whose beloved Son willingly endured the agony and shame of the cross for our redemption: Give us courage to take up our cross and follow him; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.

Lent 4: Praying for Healing and Wholeness

Read James 5:13-20.

Verbal, face to face, personal confession is not the exclusive domain of Roman Catholic priests and parishioners. Protestant tradition emphasizes the great Reformation principle of the Priesthood of All Believers. Thus, any Christian can legitimately hear the confession of any sister or brother in Christ. I would suggest that this is beneficial when guilt or shame over some sin or failing just doesn’t seem to go away. Then you may choose someone who spiritual maturity you trust to hear your confession. They can then respond, “In Christ you are forgiven, be at peace.” And if someone wants you to hear their confession, you can do them a powerful spiritual service by speaking aloud that same Assurance of Pardon.

Take a few moments for silent confession after which read aloud the Assurance of Pardon, “In Christ you are forgiven, be at peace.”

If you want a prayer of laying on of hands by the Elders and anointing as described in James, please see your pastor or one of your Elders.

Lent 5: Praying Without Words

Have you ever felt prayer surging up from deep inside that you just can’t seem to get into words? These two Scriptures give us some encouragement and guidance.

Read Romans 8:26-27 and Psalm 31:5.

Sit silently with eyes closed for a few moments thinking about these Scriptures. As something comes into your mind that is a peace or gift or presence from the Holy Spirit, turn your hands with palms up as a sign of receiving it. As something crosses your mind that you wish to release to God, turn your hands with palms down or out as a sign of letting it go to God.

After a few moments read Romans 8:26-27 and Psalm 31:5 aloud.

Lent 6: Praying with Scripture

Read John 12:20-33.

Follow this Short Guide to Lectio Divina From Discover Your Spiritual Type: A Guide to Individual and Congregational Growth by Corinne Ware, © 1995 The Alban Institute, Inc.

Lectio (Read): Read the passage carefully, getting the sequence and detail without thinking too much about the meaning. Imagine the time of day, season of the year, smells of the land, sounds of the countryside, the human touches – all the elements that would make this scene real to you. Transport yourself into the setting using your imagination.

Meditatio (Meditate): Read the scripture again. Why is there a record of this particular event or saying? What is the significance of this passage in the larger scheme of things? What does this piece mean? How does that affect an understanding of God? Of conduct? Do you see yourself in any of the characters in the passage?

Oratio (Pray): Allow your feelings to surface as you read the passage again. Do you feel happy, sad, angry or guilty? Silently or verbally talk this through with God; tell God what you feel about what you have read. Comment in you prayer on anything in the passage to which you respond.

Contemplatio (Contemplate): Sit quietly, breathe deeply and regularly, and let your mind go blank. As you quiet your inner self, simply listen in your heart. If you receive some impression or thought, quietly notice it; then focus your attention on remaining open. If you have no thoughts or impressions, return your mind to the scripture passage. After a while, open your eyes, rested and refreshed, expressing gratitude for your experience.

What do you have that you did not receive?

This morning my monthly prayer journey through the Psalms brought me to Psalm 44:3 “Not by their own sword did they win the land, nor did their own arm give them victory; but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your countenance.” That reminded me of these other passages that express this central biblical but profoundly counter-cultural principle.

Deuteronomy 8:17-18

Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.

1 Corinthians 4:7

What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?

That theme is reflected in a number of Psalms and woven through the entire biblical narrative.

Psalm 20:7 “Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God.”

Psalm 33:16-17 “A king is not saved by his great army; a warrior is not delivered by his great strength. The war horse is a vain hope for victory, and by its great might it cannot save.”

Psalm 127:1 “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

Psalm 146:3,5,7 “Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help. … Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God, … who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry.” 

Zechariah 4:6 “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”

All In The Timing

© 2012 Norman Stolpe

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works of your hands.
Psalm 8:3-6 NRSV

In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them—they are more than the sand; I come to the end—I am still with you.
Psalm 139:16-18 NRSV

Since at least his college football days NFL quarterback Tim Tebow has been blatantly demonstrative about his Christian faith. Some have applauded; some have scoffed. With a couple of professional seasons he seems to have matured some, but a one-knee kneeling prayer posture has become his trademark – tebowing.

Some skeptics have suggested with ridicule that he is praying for his team to win. Of course, I don’t know what or even if Tim Tebow is actually praying when he kneels on the football field. I suspect (or at least hope) that he is not asking God for a win but for injury-free good performances by all. I’m enough of a realist to acknowledge that players, coaches and fans in the enthusiasm of the contest might pray for a win, but only a little reflection is needed to realize such prayers from opposite sides of the field would be praying against each other and couldn’t all be answered affirmatively. Is it too much to hope all believing athletes would ask that God will be honored not so much by athletic performance as by positive, respectful relationships and character.

Perhaps without fully realizing it, some of the cynical commentaries have pointed to a much deeper issue. I saw one that pointed out the minuscule significance of a football game (even in the playoffs) compared to the vastness of the universe. Why would a God who created and upholds the universe give any attention to a game of human sport? While more global than cosmic, perhaps even more disturbing is to ask why God would care about a game of human sport in a world full of the suffering of violence, famine, injustice and oppression?

In my pastoral experience I have frequently felt that God orchestrated the timing of the details of my daily ministry. Many more times than I feel comfortable accounting for by chance, I have walked into the hospital or nursing home room just as the hospice representative has walked out. I can’t prove it, but I have felt sent by God at just that moment when an individual and their family is facing the stark reality of the end of life. It’s not that I can fix anything, but somehow people seem to understand the timing of my presence as a sign that God is with them in the moment of their extremity. Over and over again I have prayed Psalm 31:5 with people. “Into your hands, we commit” the spirit of the one who is approaching death’s door. Yes, the words of Jesus from the cross take on a great power no matter how many times I come back to them. What is repetitive for me is fresh for those who hear it.

Monday of this week three fairly intense pastoral situations called for my attention. I tried to figure out how best to schedule my response to the people in pain with my usual get the week started responsibilities. I did get to each one but not at the time I had intended. Interruptions, some mundane and some significant, kept my schedule just a little off kilter.

I arrived for a hospital visit with the seriously ill spouse of a church member about an hour later than I had hoped. I was feeling some regret at being behind. I was somewhat apprehensive as the patient I was visiting didn’t know me and did not participate in any church. As I turned the corner off of the elevator down the corridor, I saw the patient’s spouse walking toward me. After a brief chat, we went together to the patient’s room. I was warmly welcomed by the patient and believe the visit was positive.

The patient’s spouse walked with me back to the elevator and out to the parking lot. “You got here at just the right time. It was perfect. I know God sent you. Thanks for coming.” I also felt the propitiousness of the timing of my visit and mused about how it might have been different had I come an hour earlier when I had planned. Did God have a hand in the office minutia that got me to the hospital hallway just as the patient’s spouse was coming? Two minutes later we would have passed each other on the elevators.

At one level Psalms 8 and 139 affirm God’s intricate, intimate involvement in personal human affairs. Psalm 8 even acknowledges the awesome mystery of the God of all creation taking thought for mere humans. Yes, I believe in the subtle prompting of the indwelling Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, I marvel at the inscrutability of God’s involvement in such timing. I also struggle with the realization that people in much more dire circumstances cry out for God who seems totally absent. Why should I or the people who come across my path receive the grace of sensing God’s presence while millions of others, some of whom are undoubtedly more pious and faithful than I, suffer? Is God thinking about them? If so, what can God possibly be thinking?

I am not writing to find an answer to these conundrums, and certainly not to propose that I know an answer. Rather I am writing to explore my own journey with Jesus. To ask of myself, where is God in these experiences of timing? Am I walking with Jesus in all of my questioning? Does my puzzling reveal or obscure God from my spiritual vision?

God in the Spaces

My son Jon had me write a guest post for his blog about how I am being stretched in this time of transition from long-term called pastoral ministry to serving churches who are between pastors as an interim pastor. I am learning to accept that some people are calling this retirement, but I'm not there yet. You can read that and access Jon's blog at http://jonstolpe.wordpress.com/2011/07/11/god-in-the-spaces/#comment-473

Goldfinch Feathers in Transition

In our yard the other day I found the remains of a male goldfinch that had been the victim of a cat or a hawk (we have both in our neighborhood). All that was left was a small mat of feathers, but among them were just a few larger feathers that were changing from grey to gold, as male goldfinches do as spring and mating season approach. I was struck with how the tips of the feathers had just started the transition to gold.

Candy and I are in a significant transition in my ministry career from 35 years of long, called pastoral ministries with just four congregations to serving as an interim pastor to more congregations on a much shorter term basis. As we head into this transition, we can see that spring is coming, but it’s not here yet. We know something of what to expect, but we are not experiencing it yet. We are seeking and waiting, but do not know where and whom we will serve yet. Perhaps, I am like the goldfinch’s feathers – the gold has started to show on the tip but most of the feather is still gray.

Dust vs. Airplane - Dust Wins

A friend of mine from New Jersey posted a link on her Facebook page to an Associated Press story that reported that “A senior Iranian cleric says women who wear immodest clothing and behave promiscuously are to blame for earthquakes. ‘Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,’ Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader.” (by Scheherezade Faramarzi, 04-19-10) Should we be interpreting the recent earthquakes that have made the news (Haiti, Chile, Mexico, China) as God’s voice for women to cover up? Before we laugh off the crazy clerics over there, remember that some preachers in the US interpreted Hurricane Katrina as God’s way of stopping New Orleans’ gay pride parade.

This week the erupting volcano in Iceland brought air travel to and from and in Europe to a complete stop. I heard on Public Radio this morning that this has already had twice the effect as did the emptying of US airspace following September 11, 2001. But this time we can’t blame terrorists (neo-Nazi, Islamist or any other variety). We can’t blame the Wall Street banks, or the Federal regulators or Congress or the President (neither Bush nor Obama). Neither a right-wing nor a left-wing conspiracy could have been so effective at paralyzing global air traffic as one small volcano (yes, that’s what the seismologists and volcanologists call it) and prevailing winds could.

Animists (ancient and modern, even those who call themselves Christians) personify natural phenomena and interpret them as messages from the gods (or God). I hear plenty of Christians today who ask, “What is God trying to tell us?” when these disasters happen. Some even seem to think they know what the message is, which is usually some moral judgment to which they are particularly sensitive. I suggest that the message we should get is humility (not that the volcano thought of that or even that God directed it to blow to teach us that). After all, our big powerful jet airplanes were stopped by tiny dust particles. But I do think that God sent this message in Psalm 8:3-4. “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

But biblical humility is not what some have called “worm theology” that devalues humans. Psalm 8:5 expresses the great dignity of being human, made in the image of God that permeates the Bible. “You have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.” So the message of the volcano is not that humans are weak and worthless, but that we need to put ourselves and our accomplishments in perspective. For most people in most of human history, the idea that people could fly between Europe and North America in a matter of hours would have been miraculously awesome. The volcano doesn’t diminish that, just puts it in perspective.

This is not the message the volcano or earthquake is sending for God because we have become so prideful. Rather it is the interpretive lens God has given through the revelation of Scripture by which we can understand our place in the universe in which God has placed us.