Today’s Scripture Reading (April 30,
2014): Ezekiel 7
There is a “WKRP
in Cincinnati” episode where Cincinnati is about to be hit by a tornado. The radio
stations, including WKRP, are asked to get the word out about the coming storm
and what to do in case a tornado strikes in your area, but Les Nessman, WKRP’s
news anchor, does not have a script to follow concerning tornado’s. But the
boss remembers that Les did pen a script with regard to the attack of the
communists on the city of Cincinnati (I mean, in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is the
more obvious danger – and attack by communists or the possibility of a
tornado.) So on the bosses instructions, Les reads his warning bulletin on the
attack of the communists and substitutes the word tornado every time he sees
the word communist. Although the subject matter of the episode is deadly
serious, the resulting news release is amusing – and at least once Les gets to
say the phrase “godless red tornados.”
It is the
beginning of storm season. I am hearing warnings of tornado clusters (and I am
not sure that I have ever heard it phrased quite that way before. If Les was
running the news release maybe we would get to hear the phrase “godless red
tornado clusters.”) And there have already been damages and death caused by the
early tornados of the season. Hurricanes are also beginning to brew over the
warm waters of the world’s oceans. All of this is to be expected. But in recent
years it seems that the storms have gotten worse.
One writer
recently commented that we need to begin to think about removing the phrase “Act
of God” to describe these storms. It might be that Les Nessman is actually
right. The storms that are attacking are godless. While this planet has always
suffered from severe storms, the magnitude of the storms we are facing today
might have less to do with an unpredictable “Act of God” than it has to do with
being the very predictable result of the things that we have done to our
planet. We are the ones who have decimated the earth’s ability to handle the
various storms of the earth, and the result has been that the storms have
become more threatening, more dangerous, and have involved much greater loss of
property and life than ever before. And the only ones that we have to blame are
ourselves.
Ezekiel
writes one of the scariest lines of the Bible in this passage. Writing with
regard to the downfall of the Kingdom of Judah, Ezekiel says that God will “deal with them according to their conduct, and by their own
standards [he] will judge them.” Basically God has decided to leave them to
their own devices. And the same comment might be applied to us. In the same way
that God allowed the rulers of Judah to destroy their nation so that they would
finally recognize that God is God over all, he maybe has allowed us to destroy
the entire planet so that we will recognize the same thing. And there is a bit
of a strange epitaph that could be added here. It is not in the beauty that we
recognize God (a sunrise is never called an “Act of God,” although I believe that
it is.) It is in the storms that we see God. And I think that is sad, but deep
down I also know that it is also our choice.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel
8
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