This Sunday, we wrap up the season of creation with Mountain Sunday. What is it about mountains that can be at once holy, inspiring, and intimidating all at the same time? We will also consider the joys and perils of the "mountaintop experience."
Our starting point is the idea of the holy mountain found in Isaiah and in the Psalms (see Isaiah 65:17-25 and Psalm 48).
This week, we continue our look at God's creation by considering the skies. We think about the role of the skies and heavens as a part of creation and throughout the Bible. We also consider an apocalyptic vision from Jeremiah that feels right at home in any number of post-apocalyptic stories in our modern world (see Jeremiah 4:23-28).
Today, we continue our focus on God’s creation -- both the act of creation and the things created -- by taking a look at humanity, that is, all the people who inhabit God’s creation. Picking up our reading in the book of Genesis where we left off last week (Genesis 1:26-28), we see that following the creation of the Earth itself, the skies, the seas, the sun, moon, and stars, the plants and all living creatures, God creates humanity. If you’ve been following along, you know that this is a continuation of the same day on which God created all the animals on land. On the fifth day of creation, God created the creatures of the sea and the birds of the air. Now on the sixth day, so far, God has created all of the wildlife on land -- the cattle and livestock, the crawling things, and all manner of animals. And seeing that it was good and pleasing, God continued by creating humans.
As we enter the month of September, we return again to the Season of Creation. Throughout the year, our readings routinely remind us of God’s providence, of all that God has done for us, of all that God has given us. But we don’t always dig into the details, and we rarely focus exclusively on God’s creation.
However, if we stop and think about it for a moment, the very act of creation is the beginning of God’s relationship with the world and ultimately with us. The Hebrew Scriptures, commonly called the Old Testament in the Christian Bible, begin with God forming creation into a pleasing design. God is pleased with the results as the Earth takes shape.