Mail Archive of the old Santa Clara Valley Lutheran Parish

Subject: Today's devotion

Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 07:37:41 -0700 (PDT)

From: David Bonde <pastorbonde@gmail.com>

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Subject: Today's devotion
From: David Bonde <pastorbonde@gmail.com>
To: SCVLP <scvlp@googlegroups.com>
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15,000 years ago there was no bay.  At the end of the last ice age the
coast line was out beyond the Farallon Islands.  The Sacramento river
had cut through the Coastal Range mountains at the Golden Gate
creating a migratory passage from the valley of the bay out to a vast
savannah west of the mountains to the sea.  The =93bay=94 and the
grasslands were home to herds of mastodon, camels, giant sloths and
elk chased by sabertooth tigers and a giant bear.  Somehow I can
imagine the bay as a meadow and the plains by the sea.  It=92s the
megafauna that make it seem like another world.

Abraham was only 3,400 years ago.  Human civilization is such a tiny
blip on the history of this planet. The Pleistocene era (the era just
before the emergence of =93civilization=94) lasted two and a half million
years.  The Jurassic period extended from some 200 million years ago
to 145 million years ago; the Triassic another 50 million years before
that. There was a time that what we know now as Antarctica was
tropical. The continents, if I remember this correctly, have been
scrunched together and moved apart twice.  There was a time this
planet was without oceans.  There was a time this planet was without
oxygen.

Human history is such a tiny blip on the history of this planet, this
planet such a tiny blip in the history of our galaxy, this galaxy such
a tiny blip in the history of the universe.   =93What is man that thou
are mindful of him, the son of man that thou dost care for him?=94
writes the author of psalm 8RSV.

A little humility is called for.  We stride the earth like two year
olds who think we are the center of the world.  We boast of our
accomplishments as if our thoughts and opinions defined the universe.
But 80% of the stuff in the universe is hidden from us, dark matter
whose affects on gravity we can measure, but whose existence we cannot
see.

A little humility is called for.  A little humility before the
vastness of the universe.  A little humility before the complexity of
the human creature beside us (whom we are so quick to judge, or to
use, or to even to love, but whose story we can ever only know in
part).  A little humility before the power that called the universe
into being.  A little humility before the ancient texts that reveal
the heart of the universe as a voice of mercy, freedom and justice.

We are not the authors of salvation.  We are not the authors of wisdom
or truth or righteousness.  We are specks before the vastness of the
universe who have heard a voice that says the eternal cares for us.
Indeed, the eternal bleeds for us.

An occasion for humility, it seems to me.  And gratitude.  And awe.
And compassion and respect for those who stand next to us on the
seashore.

David Bonde

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