Mind Meld of A Different Kind

PSALM 36

For the choir director: A psalm of David, the servant of the Lord.

Sin whispers to the wicked, deep within their hearts.
They have no fear of God at all.
In their blind conceit,
they cannot see how wicked they really are.
Everything they say is crooked and deceitful.
They refuse to act wisely or do good.
They lie awake at night, hatching sinful plots.
Their actions are never good.
They make no attempt to turn from evil.

Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your justice like the ocean depths.
You care for people and animals alike, O Lord.
How precious is your unfailing love, O God!
All humanity finds shelter
in the shadow of your wings.
You feed them from the abundance of your own house,
letting them drink from your river of delights.
For you are the fountain of life,
the light by which we see.

Pour out your unfailing love on those who love you;
give justice to those with honest hearts.
Don’t let the proud trample me
or the wicked push me around.
Look! Those who do evil have fallen!
They are thrown down, never to rise again.

Too deep to measure

I live in the area of NY known for its lakes. The Finger Lakes are glacially formed lakes that stretch like fingers on a hand. Each lake is very narrow, most are less than a mile, but they stretch North and South for several miles. I am told the higher the hills surrounding the lake, the deeper the water in the lake.

One of the Finger Lakes has a submarine training station it is so deep. I once was told this lake has an underground river that flows out of the lake, making it impossible to obtain an accurate measurement of its depth. (This could be a fisherman story, I don’t know for certain.)

David describes God’s love as stretching across the heavens. I would say it is deeper than the deepest ocean or lake. Like an underground river, when you think you have reached the end of God’s love, it sweeps you away to deeper depths.

Funny thing with the finger lakes, they really disrupt your travel if you are trying to go Southeast from Rochester. You have to go South then East or East then South to get around the lake. So it is with God’s love, hard to avoid. It affects your route through life no matter where you are going.

My prayer is a song.

Your love O Lord, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness stretches to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountain, O yeah, your justice flows like the ocean tide. I will lift my voice to worship to you my God. (Third Day arrangement of Psalm 36) - Dan Jones

"Who murdered the Gorillas?"

That title leapt off the front of a recent issue of the National Geographic Magazine. At first I thought it reflected the radical animal rights agenda, and hair brained notion, that animals possess equal value as people. I thought, “Hold on a minute, murder refers to taking human life. Animals can be killed justly (food) or unjustly (sport) by humans hunting them down. But hunt another human, and it’s always wrong. Why? God breathed his own image into humans. Their value far surpasses every animal.

The article told the sad tale of gorillas caught in a vicious conflict between warring sides in a central African country. Gorillas have been killed without provocation or reason. Just killed and their bodies left to rot. As much as I recoil at such senseless killing, I still want to preserve the language of murder for people.

Perhaps I should not get too entrenched in this notion, though. I think David was onto something when he equated God’s care of people and animals. God’s unfailing love reaches to the full extent of his creation. While David elsewhere celebrates the uniqueness of humanity, “made just a little lower than God,” here he grabbed my attention with his own attention to the animal world; far more attention and care than I have ever considered.

I am more disgusted with dead animals lying along the road than concerned about how urban sprawl and highway development affect these animals who are crafted by the same God who crafted me. And, please have mercy one me (!), all the impounded dogs and cats haven’t moved me one bit. “Euthanize them and solve the problem!” has been my attitude.

Was David just an animal lover? Or does his celebration of God’s immense love for all his creation suggest that my attitude should change. Just because killing a stray cat (mercifully of course!) isn’t murder, doesn’t mean that God approves.

Father of mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish, place in my heart the same sense of your vast love and care for everything you created. Grant me the same joy in caring for your creation as you received by creating it and continue to receive by sustaining it. - Mike Leamon