St Paul in his letter to the Romans speaks of a great mystery, that God cares deeply for each one of us, and that he can bring out of our broken, wounded creation something new and glorious.
We are by our very human nature deficient and wanting, inescapably vulnerable. Such is the pain of the earth. Yet the sufferings of time, Paul writes, are nothing compared to the glory revealed in us.
The flower fades and droops. Our once young bodies will sag and then linger long. Dead flesh hardens first, then melts away, corruptible, slave to space and time. And yet we glory in it, and rightly so. God does as well. This human flesh, like all creation groaning, longs for finish, completion, and rest. Such is the glorious agony of our human condition. We, like the earth that gives birth to us, are subject to the laws of rise and decay. We are fundamentally good, we are things that grow; and yet because we grow, it means that we are unfinished. We are God’s creation crying out for completion.
God created us, male and female, gifted not just with life, but with awareness. We are life aware of itself, given the freedom to affirm or reject the limited good that we are. Mountains show might, and seas roar, but it is only humans that say “Yes” to God. They might also say, “No.” God created humanity capable of free choice. From such a creation would come not only the glories of love, but also the catastrophes of moral evil.
Some of us might not understand this. Jesus tells us a parable to help us understand this gift. He said, “a sower went out to sow”.
On the paths of life, unrooted, our freedom is pecked at by passing birds. For others, the freedom dries and withers. Still others choke their choice in fear and worldly anxiety. But then, others take it all in. They embrace the limit of life, the gift of being good but not God. They cherish the gift of dependence on God as created beings. And they bear fruit a thousand times more splendid than the bounty of trees.
This is not the gift of a God that has abandoned us to our own devices, but the gift of a God who cares deeply for us, and who wants us to live glorious lives.
