Monday of Holy Week
“What’s the fastest plane in the world?” was a question my 7th-grade class asked our teacher. We were playing a favorite game of ours, Stump the Chump. As of yet, we had been unable to stump him. His response surprised us all as he asked, “Jet turbine or rocket-propelled?” We once again realized that we were out of our league. It turns out the fastest manned, jet turbine plane on record is the SR-71 Blackbird. The best part of that plane is that it is completely unarmed.
As a teenage boy, I was intrigued and captivated by destructive displays of power. I wanted to know about the Tsar Bomba (largest Nuke ever detonated) and about the supermassive volcano under Yellowstone. I would have never admitted it, but I was also one of those readers that wanted to skip the songs and poems in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. I didn’t appreciate creative power.
Today’s first reading would have challenged me. Today, we are shown not destructive power, but creative power. God’s servant’s wonders and works are not violent or loud. They are constructive, restorative, and gentle. God’s own power is shown to be nurturing, creative, and sustaining.
In the face of a world with massive destructive potential; in a time when people stand in awe of the power of sickness to destroy lives and livelihoods; it is good for us to remember God’s wondrous power was first displayed through creation. God is our nurturer, sustainer, provider, and cultivator.
As you proceed into this day pray with these images from Isaiah.
- God, “created the heavens and stretched them out,” like our divine sustainer kneading and stretching dough to provide for us bread that always satisfies.
- God, “spreads out the earth with its crops,” like a farmer tilling his seeds into the soil to provide for us in our time of need.
- God, “gives breath to its people and spirit to those who walk on [the earth].” God gives life and transforms air into breath. As the world intensely focuses on an illness that deprives breath, let us remember the greater creative power of our God who gave us every breath we have drawn, and more importantly has given us an imperishable spirit that is not sustained by oxygen but the Spirit of the Living God.
- Spencer Hargadon