The view out
our kitchen window never fails to amaze me. We can see out over the neighbours
rooftops down to the port at Onehunga, over the Mangere basin to Mangere bridge.
Mt Mangere kind of hides behind a kauri tree in the vacant lot next door. Then
if you look left you can see the Manukau stretching down to the distant Awhitu
peninsula. It is particularly wonderful at dawn and dusk. That magic hour as
the sun rises and sets. As our outlook is to the south we can see the impact of
first and last light on this vista.
On clear
days that kauri tree next door, glows with reds and golds, it’s leaves take on
a vivid almost iridescent green. The water reflects the same hues and can be
gold or red, just a breath taking moment.
As a prelude or curtain call to when
sun and horizon meet, the harbour and the distant hills everything can
become the subtlest of mauves. Even the concrete silo’s down at the wharf catch
the light and reflect the amazing colour changes. These rather ugly industrial structures
join in the light show, which proclaims the grandeur of God’s creation. A bit
flowery I know but that’s what came to mind when I reflected on verse 8 of
Psalm 65
“The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders
Where morning dawns, where evening fades
You call forth joy”
This Psalm
of David invites the entire world to give praise to God for his awesome deeds.
Verse 8 is just not about those awe inspiring sunrises and sunsets but is a
universal call for all people from the east where the sun rises and to the west
where it sets to come and worship God.
In three
stanzas. It gives three reasons to praise God.
The first is
that God answers Prayer and forgives sins. This starts with the faithful who
fulfil their vows before God. But it expands beyond just the faithful, just
Israel, to all people. God is the one who hears all prayer and answers, who is
able to meet that most basic of human need of forgiveness and fresh start. The
psalmist finishes that with a wonderful picture of people coming from all over the
world to the temple, coming as God’s invited guests to be filled with the good
things that God has for us.
It points us
to a God who loves and care for all of humanity, it points us to the person of
Jesus Christ, his death on the cross and his resurrection, which are means by
which God has answered our prayers for forgiveness and fresh start. It looks
forward to the invitation Jesus offers to all who will come to him to be the Children
of the most high and dwell in the presence of God and experience the abundant
and eternal life Christ offers. Not just in a building, like the temple but by
the Spirit of God dwelling within them, within us.
The second
stanza calls us to give thanks because of God’s awesome deeds in the provision
of security and stability in the midst of turmoil. Again it starts with God’s
people as they call God their saviour but broadens out to encompass the ends of
the earth and the farthest sea. For the Hebrews the seas were unknown and
uncertain symbols of conflict and chaos. The power of God is shown in the fact
that he has established the mountains, he has set a limit to the sea and is
able to calm the sea and the equally chaotic turmoil of human history as well.
It is easy
for us to think that the world is out of control, that there is no hope. But
the psalm invites us to see that God is still sovereign and moving. The psalm
answers the disciples question about Jesus after he has calmed the storm that
threatened to swamp their boat out in the middle of the lake. In amazement,
they wondered “who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him”. The
Psalmist knows. It gives us hope as we face issues in our lives and crisis in
our world that God is present and at work. I wonder if the recent uprise in people’s
concern about climate change and the churches rediscovery of creation care as
part of our mission isn’t part of God’s sovereign move in history in the face
of our rampant growth in technology and consumerism with little regard for its
effects on the world.
The stanza
finished with a declaration that all of creation shows God’s awesome deeds. EM
Blaiklock comments “ All creation speaks to a reverent mind of the might of the
intelligence behind Creation.”
The final
stanza talks of God’s great acts in providence. It may have been a psalm
originally written for harvest time, and it celebrates a good harvest. It
starts again with God’s blessing of Israel but soon moves to include all
people, they are to see how God has blessed Israel and so come to worship him
as well. More than that because of God’s provision of water and sun, the whole
of creation is pictured as joining in a joyful party to praise God. the corn
sprouts and ripens and waves its head in a liturgal dance with the wind. The
grass and wildflowers blossom and bloom and paint the desert with joyful and
vibrant colour, stock revel in abundance, and the hills dress themselves in
their party clothes, which maybe a reference here to the remnants of forests in
Israel.
It’s forest
Sunday and it would easy to ask the question where are the trees and the
forests in this psalm. Didn’t they get an invite to this party. Israel you have
to remember was a desert and agrarian people. Their harvest was dependant on
rain at the right time, in marginal lands. When it did come the barren rocky
ground on the hills round Jerusalem would have been covered with grass and
flowers, for the sheep and cattle to graze on. So there wasn’t much forest in
Israel at that time. But they did see trees as a form of blessing from God. In
Psalm 1 a tree with a permanent and reliable water source is used to illustrate
someone who puts their trust in God. The cedars of Lebanon are one of God’s
wonders. In Isaiah 40 as Isaiah talks of God bringing his people home from
exile, the picture he uses is a straight tree lined road. God’s restoration of
his people is echoed in trees growing in the desert. In Isaiah 55, which we
had as a call to worship this morning,
trees rejoice and clap their hands because we come to know him, we respond to
the word of God which comes down to the earth and achieves everything God had
for it to do, creation rejoices because of what Jesus Christ has done for us. In
the vision that Ezekiel has in chapter 47, a river flows from the temple
refreshing the land. Along its banks
fruit trees grow, that provide healing and that are always in season. It’s an
image of God pouring out his spirit and you and I bearing fruit that bring
healing as we allow the spirit to water our lives, But also a picture that that
should have an impact on a dry and barren land. I’m also sure if David knew the
science of how the trees and forests act to provide the air we breathe he would
have placed forests equally in a psalm that spoke of Gods providence and
provision.
Maybe it’s
easy for us to be like this Psalm and forget the forest and the role it plays
in God’s good creation. When I drive
around New Zealand I am always struck by the beauty of the green pasture on the
rolling Hills. Then I am reminded that this is a relatively recent development
in our country. Off on the distant hills there is the darker green of native
bush, and you realise how much has been cleared. A process of deforestation
that is going on all round the world, contributing to the erosion of our top
soil, taking away the filter for what gets into our water ways. Destroying valuable habitat for the animals
that live there, Habitats that Psalm 104 says are equally God’s provision,
God’s purpose for all flesh, human and animal.
It’s good to
see on a local level people doing something about it. Land in native forest
being set aside. I have a friend Tom who works for the Queen Elizabeth II trust
in the South Island to encourage and help land owners put blocks of native
forest into that trust so they are preserved for future generation. Marginal
land is being reforested, another friend of mine is a well known New Zealand
conservationist. Who I used to drive round the country because he didn’t have a
car and he would tell me stop and get out and disappear into the bush and come
back with karaka berries, or the seeds of a rear golden rata tree that he knew
was in the bush by the side of the road, or at Cape reanga I had to watch as he
disappeared out tha car and over the cliffs to get seeds for dwarf manuka and
kanuka trees that grew only there. But he has been involved in buying land and
replanting native forest in northland to link the kauri forests. He invented
the special roading that goes through the waipoua forest, to protect the tree
roots from the damage of ashphalt and cars. Way back in 1987 he sat up trees in the
Pureora forest to save it from logging and pushed to have it made a conservation
reserve. That is part of his Christian faith. For us it maybe as simple as
being willing to plant more trees.
In the end
psalm 65 invites us to see the creation around us as a gift from God, part of
his blessing and provision for the whole of humanity. Beyond that focus on what
it does for us it declares that the whole earth is God’s and speaks of the awe
of his wonderful deeds. These form a solid foundation for Christians to see how
we use and care for what God has given as an important part of our witness and
practise. The universality of these gifts from God call and challenge us to
engage on a global scale as well. What we have learned is that the ends of the
earth and the farthest seas are a lot closer than the Psalmist imagined What we
do here has an impact all over. Finally this Psalms praise of God as the one
who provides forgiveness gives us hope, beyond simply being about coming to
faith in Jesus Christ, can I say that’s important and central to our mission as
a church but it speaks to the fact that change is possible, that we can make a
fresh start and do things differently.
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