Today’s Scripture Reading (November
9, 2019): Ecclesiastes 9
From
1928 until 1930, China suffered from a severe drought. The drought was followed
by a harsh winter in 1930-1931. As the people braved the cold of that winter,
they were probably grateful that it looked like the drought was finally over.
During that winter, high amounts of snow fell, especially in the mountainous
areas. And, as always happens, the winter ended, giving up its cold reign to
the gentle warmth of spring and summer. Under the care of the warm sun, the
snow began to melt, and the rivers, especially the Yangtze and Huai Rivers,
began to swell. Accompanying the snowmelt were the heavy spring rains of 1931.
Spring turned into summer, and in July the floods started. The 1931 floods of
the Yangtze and Huai Rivers rank as one of the worst natural disasters in the history
of our planet. The floodwaters reigned throughout the summer, ultimately not
receding until November 1931. Estimates say that the floods displaced as many
as 53 million people and that the death toll from the floods may have been as
high as 5 million people. About half a million people drowned in the flooding
water, but that was only the beginning. Those who survived the floods had to
deal with displacement from their homes and jobs, overcrowding, and a breakdown
in sanitation, all of which helped to spread cholera, measles, malaria,
dysentery, and snail fever (a disease caused by parasitic flatworms) throughout
the already weakened population. Both good people and bad people, the wise and
foolish, died either in the flood or as a direct result of the China floods of
1931.
Some
theologians agree that if we look just at the creation, creation presents to us
an argument for the power of God. It does not give us evidence about the love
of God. And it is the power of God that often presents to us with a severe
problem in our beliefs about God. If we prioritize the power of God, it is easy
to become fatalistic in our faith. God does what God does, and we pay the bill.
Some even believe that we do not have the freedom to choose. Both the history
and the future of our world are already written by an all-powerful God. We are
nothing more than actors on the stage. The problem with that kind of thinking
is that then there if that is true, then there can be no guilt attributed to
sin. Hitler was not evil; he simply played the part that God had laid out for
him. I love to act. I have played many roles, both good and bad. Once I played
the role of a drunk Santa sleeping off his last binge in jail cell. But playing
a drunk on the stage does not make me a drunk. It is an interesting dilemma
because we want to believe that God is all-powerful.
Only
when we introduce the idea of the love of God, which is presented to us in both
the Hebrew and Christian biblical books, do we begin to see a different
picture. God’s love demands that we have a choice. Love leads us to believe that
even a God-directed fate is impossible. But the problem is that the love of God
begins to limit the power of God. A loving God obviously would not endorse
evil, and yet one of the issues we have is that he does not seem to stop it.
The 1931 floods in China and other natural disasters do not discriminate based
on righteousness.
The
Teacher seems to have fallen into this dilemma. He sees the power of God and
decides that fate is in control. Who knows whether it will be good or evil that
will win the day? Will they righteous find love, or be the victims of hate? The
end is in the hands of God.
And we
agree. But we know that the end is in the hands of a loving God, and because of
that those who choose the path of righteousness have nothing to fear. Even if
we are victimized in this world, in the end we know that love will win the day.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes
10
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