Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - January 21, 2023
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth....” The majestic opening chapter of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, is almost too familiar to us, but it's worth reading against its Middle East background and time. Other peoples in that area had a number of wild stories about creation. One story held that two gods fought and one hacked the other's body into pieces that became the various continents and islands.
Others regarded such mysterious objects as the sun and moon as gods. In opposition to all of this Genesis insists that everything in this universe, from galaxies to the smallest detectable particles, has its origin in God, no matter how much development it has undergone over billions of years.
Further, Genesis maintains that the sun and moon are God's creatures like everything else, not gods. It's a way of underlining that all has its origin in the one God. With the help of modern science, its telescopes able to penetrate deep into space and instruments able to probe the micro-particles, with this help we have an ever-deepening and awesome view of what this creation is. We see more clearly its vastness and richness. Not only what happens in church, but what goes on outside, in nature, in the skies and the world around us, can feed our wonder. And also feed and expand our thanksgiving to the God from whom all of this and we ourselves come. “We worship you, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory.”
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
