The king will mourn, the prince will be clothed with despair, and the hands of the people of the land will tremble. I will deal with them according to their conduct, and by their own standards I will judge them. ‘Then they will know that I am the LORD.’ – Ezekiel 7:27

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 28, 2017) Ezekiel 8

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 about 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 assault 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. Maybe if Les were 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 about 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. 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 realize 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 understand 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 9