Psalms 101 and 102: Like any other mother of sons, I am always finding holes in their clothes: knees of jeans gone out, socks that can't be comfortable to wear, or a favourte t-shirt worn down to rags. Clothes wear out, especially when put to hard use of the life of teenage boys. And as much as I would wish it, they don't magically regenerate like new skin on a cut or grass on the lawn. If they are going to be repaired, I'm the one who will have to do it.
Fibers fray and tear, but the earth? All of creation? Psalm 102: 25-26 suggests that. After a long lament, the psalmist turns his/her attention to creation at the end of the psalm and how it will "wear out like a garment" and heaven and earth with perish, but God remains. I suppose the psalmist is speaking to faith in the unchangeable nature of God, that God remains faithful despite human failures, but the image is disturbing in light of the current ecological crisis. We now fear that the earth will wear out, but most people don't celebrate that fact in the same way the psalmist appears to. For how can people continue to live on a worn out earth, as verse 28 suggests the children of the faithful will continue to do? Walker-Jones says this psalm contributes to the idea that humanity is above and separate from earth, an earth that must be conquered and subdued.
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I appreciated your reflection on the image of the earth as a worn-our garment and understanding of it in the context of today's ecological crisis. Faithfulness is not that evident right now.
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