Saturday 21 January 2023
At that temperature, clothing and shelter is a must. The latest fashions probably will not help, nor need it be a mansion. A good down insulated parka, well insulated boots, and thermal coveralls are a good start, and a shelter of some kind with a heat systems that works well enough. That’s enough to give God thanks and praise.
Job 1:21
He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
Romans 13:14
Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
Words of Grace For Today
While the practicalities of life in the frozen north and in most places around the globe require that humans make provisions for clothing and shelter of various kinds for various seasons;
and while our greed and pride take our drive to sufficiently provide for ourselves and our families into over-drive, so that we get caught up in all sorts of unnecessary patterns of consumption and dress and shelters that are nothing short of amazingly stupid, wasteful, and planet destructive;
and while we then place great social worth measured by the degree of our wasteful provisions for shelter and clothing (and so much much, like transportation) … you know what I mean when we realize that social standing is given to those with the biggest houses (well mansions really) and the most expensive, fancy and impractical clothing, and the biggest, fastest, newest cars and trucks;
and while we hear moaning and groaning from all directions that with inflation one has to cut back on … well extra-curricular activities or new clothes or new vehicles or upgrades to the house … ah mansion or one has to downsize into a palatial mansion instead of being able to live in a ostentatious gargantuan palace-castle-mansion in the best part of the city, or maybe even have to sell off the lake cottage (that mansion by the lake in which three or four families of 5 could comfortably live!);
Given all that it is a gentle reminder back towards health to remember that God gives us life as a naked little infant, and takes life as a breathless corpse (if dressed then the worms will relieve us of that burden) and
our place and station is to give God thanks, instead of trying to out consume our neighbours (today it’s how can we out consume our neighbours by paying for ‘green’ consumption!)
So what will we do this day with the headaches caused by inflation, irresponsible government, climate change, and corruption that is spread thickly from churches to communities to cops to lawyers to courts?
Our work this day is to give God praise and thanks.
It probably would not help to reduce our consumption by 90% and our carbon footprint to a negative value, but we think that may not be possible, right? And yet more than 95% of all humans have consumed far less than 10% of what we consume, and their carbon footprint was minuscule compared to ours. It helped that most lived with less than a quarter (or is it 10%) of the number of humans that we cohabit the earth with today.
Whatever we do our work this day is to give God praise and thanks.