Morning Devotion for the Season of Epiphany
January 14, 2022
Invitatory
Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me, and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end.
Amen.
The Lord has shown forth his glory: Come let us adore him.
Reading: Genesis 6:1-9
When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose. Then the Lord said, “My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown. The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created—people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
I would like to say that I often tell my wife that I love her. I would also hope that this statement rings true for her, that, in fact, I do express this.
I’d also like to say that when I tell her that I love her this is not prompted by some external sense of responsibility (e.g. that it’s her birthday or our anniversary), nor are my declarations merely habitual, like many of the casual expressions we use each day. Just as I might be taken aback if she responded by asking what exactly about her elicited such a declaration or how, precisely, my love should be understood.
I’d like to say that there is a deep, intrinsic mystery to why and when I tell my wife that I love her. I would be unable to explain it, apart, perhaps, from making reference to a couple of stanzas from a poem by e.e. cummings.
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose
(I do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands*
I would like to say that love isn’t reasoned. If we step back to try to observe it critically, we lose sight of it.
Anger isn’t reasoned either, but, unlike love, it closes rather than opens. First it sets us apart. Then it sets us at odds. And then it provides us excuse to destroy and to eliminate. Fingers tighten into fists.
The very strange text from Genesis appointed for today is a preface to the story of Noah. In ways not explained, increasing distance occurred between all the elements of creation: heaven from earth, human beings from God, people from one another. Such, we are told, is the nature of evil and of evil’s companion, anger. Inexplicably, anger pushes away; it steps back and judges. And anger begets anger. And with startling immediacy (here in the space of one sentence) it is determined, then, that extermination is the best plan. Even for God. So the rains are sent, not to open but to blot out almost all life from the face of the earth – and we easily go with the flow.
But, with the same immediacy, Noah proved no better than the rest. Evil continued. And God then declared – after all the carnage – that anger is no solution to any problem. It tears us down and tears us apart, often from the distance of our never having to know or to face one another.
This story, so early in Genesis, turns all the rest of the Bible into a vast, poetic meditation on love, maintained in place of anger. It’s a hard lesson. We have yet to learn it. But I’d like to say that this displacement is ultimately what leads from despair to joy.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy Name,
thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
*“somewhere i have never traveled” e.e. cummings
