Saydee & Luna
For those of you who don’t know, our dog Saydee recently passed away. She was a part of our family for 15 of her 17 years, which is quite remarkable, given that the average lifespan for her breed is ten to fourteen years.
Saydee was always gentle, but also protective of our two boys as they were growing up. Saydee took care of us - and she had complete confidence that we would always love and take care of her. The trust she placed in us was complete.
Saydee knew, for example, that food would always appear at mealtime. So Saydee would take her time eating, and when she was full, she’d stop eating. Sometimes she’d leave part of her meal, and come back to it later. She wasn’t worried about anyone taking her food, and she trusted that food would always be there.
Luna, on the other hand… Luna has trust issues.
It’s not Luna’s fault. Before we adopted her, Luna was a stray, abandoned on the streets, and life on the streets is hard. Luna was malnourished when we got her, because food is hard to find when you’re a stray. Even now, after several years, unless she’s not feeling well, Luna still tears through her food bowl the moment it’s placed before her.
Life has taught Luna that there may not be a next meal, and that others may try to take the meal before you, so it’s best to eat as much as you can as quickly as you can.
For Luna, no amount of food is ever enough - because who knows how long it will be until your next meal. She’ll eat as much as you give her, even if it’s too much. After she became a part of our family, Luna quickly went from being underweight and malnourished to being overweight, and we had to limit the amount of food we gave her.
But Saydee knew when she had had enough. She trusted that food would always be there, so she only ate when she was hungry.
Among humans, you see people who act like Saydee, and people who act like Luna. You see people who consume only what they need, because they trust that God will always provide; and you see people who consume as much as they can, as quickly as they can, taking more than they need, because - I suppose - they are unable to trust that God will always provide.
2. The Root of Injustice
“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
Our God is generous and faithful. God gives us what we need. There is always enough, as long as we share what we’ve been given, and as long as we don’t take more than we need.
The problem is that we don’t share. Too many people are like Luna, consuming way more than they need, and way more than is even healthy for them.
And they aren’t grateful for the gifts they’ve been given, because it’s never enough. They always want more.
So they take, take, take. They don’t share. And others, for whom there would have been enough if everyone shared and was grateful for what they had, are left out. Others don’t get enough, because some - many - took more than they needed.
This is the root of injustice.
The Bible talks a lot about this.
When the Hebrews were in the wilderness, and God provided manna for them to eat, each person was only to collect enough for themselves, or enough for those in their household. Every day God provided, and every day the people collected what they needed.
In this way, God taught the people to take only what is needed, and to recognize the gracious gift that it is. And the people learned to be thankful to God, for the generous acts of giving God bestows.
Jesus once told the story of a rich man whose land produced abundantly, giving him more than he needed. In fact, he had more than his barns could hold! So the rich man tore down his barns so that he could build bigger barns, and continue growing his wealth…
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’”
We can also examine the prophets and their judgments against the nations. Whenever the wealthy started acquiring too much, growing their wealth to obscene amounts, while neglecting the poor, the prophets spoke out.
In the eighth century BCE, there was great economic inequality among the nations. The rich took as much as they could, and the poor were left without. So God called on Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Jonah, and Micah, to speak out against this injustice.
Then there was a time of relative economic equality, and guess what? There are no prophetic writings from that period.
But then, in the 7th century BCE, the rich again began to hoard their wealth and the poor were left destitute. So God called Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Obadiah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah to speak out against this injustice.
In the 6th century BCE, people once again learned to be grateful, and to share, so that the poor could at least make a living. And again, the prophets were silent.
But toward the end of the 6th century, and stretching into the 5th century, the nations again forgot to share and be grateful. The poor were left out of the nation’s economic growth, and so this time God called on Haggai, Zechariah, Joel, and Malachi, to speak out against this injustice.
Time and time again, God teaches God’s people the importance of recognizing that all gifts are from God, and to trust in our God who provides; to demonstrate gratitude for the gifts God has given; and to never take more than we need, so that the gifts can be shared with all God’s people.
And even though this teaching is one that is repeated over and over throughout scripture, it is one that we have failed to follow.
3. Every Good Gift
Why are we so greedy? Why do we work so hard to acquire more than we need? Why are we willing to destroy one another, and destroy the earth, in an attempt to satisfy our hunger for more and more wealth?
No matter how full our barns are, it’s never enough. The prophets condemn us, and Jesus says to us, “You fool!” And yet we keep on pursuing wealth and consuming resources and destroying one another and destroying the earth.
Why?
I think it’s because of our failure to recognize God in every good and generous gift. I think we’ve failed to understand what it says in the book of James, that every good and generous gift comes from God.
I know I often fail to recognize God in the gifts I’ve been given. The food I eat. The clothes I wear. Everything I use on a daily basis. They’re all things, items that I consume, things that I use, that I take for granted; and I fail to consider how every single thing is a gift from God, derived from the sacred resources which fill God’s good creation.
That’s the challenge: to recognize how good and marvelous every little thing is. A piece of paper that we so easily use and discard was once a tree; and that tree provided homes for wildlife, and helped purify the water, and helped stabilize the climate, and transformed carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe. That tree was a miracle, a holy, precious, life-giving gift from God.
People come along and chop that tree down and turn it into wood or paper, and I’m not saying that we should never turn trees into wood or paper; but I remember reading in The Secret Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben that whatever products we make from trees - homes, books, whatever - should be just as miraculous and just as holy as the trees from which they come.
Can we look at a piece of paper, and recognize the holy? Can we look at a piece of paper, and see God? Can we see what a precious gift it is to us?
If we can, then perhaps we can learn to be grateful for that gift, and perhaps we can learn to not waste that gift, and perhaps we can learn to take better care of that gift, and perhaps we can work to ensure that all people can benefit from that gift.
4. Saying Thanks
I remember watching Marie Kondo’s TV show, about decluttering your life. Get rid of the things you don’t need, she taught; but before you throw those things out, first offer a prayer of gratitude for the gift that item was to you. Say thank you to the gift, and thank you to the giver.
I imagine that if I could learn to say thank you to every piece of paper I throw away - and learn to say thank you to God every time I throw a piece of paper away - it would make me think twice about how I use resources. It would motivate me to search for ways to be less wasteful, and to not use more than I need.
What if I could develop that attitude about the clothes I wear? About the food I eat? About the energy that powers my electronics and the fuel I put into my car? How would it change me if I took a moment to recognize the holy in everything I consume?
Could it help me be more grateful? Could it help me know when I have enough, and to not keep consuming more and more when I don’t need more?
I don’t know. We have a collective mental disorder. We don’t recognize when we have enough. Just like the anorexic, who is unable to realize when they are skinny enough, we have a collective mental disorder that keeps us from recognizing when we have enough.
And it keeps us from being grateful. And it keeps us from sharing. And it keeps us from trusting in God or in one another.
It’s an addiction, a word I don’t use lightly.
After all, our failure to recognize when enough is enough is leading us to destroy one another and destroy our planet.
5. Restoring Wholeness to the World
In the book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I read about the Mayan creation story. I was surprised at how similar it is to the creation story we have in Genesis.
In the Mayan creation story, when the gods created the animals, they were disappointed, because the animals could only growl, hiss, tweet. In other words, they weren’t good companions for the gods. So the gods created humans. Creatures who could speak.
But the humans lacked compassion for one another and the other creatures of the earth. And the humans lacked gratitude. As Kimmerer tells it, "They did not know thanks or caring and so they endangered the rest of creation. The gods wished to end this failed experiment in humanity and so they sent great catastrophes to the world - a flood, earthquakes, and, most importantly, they loosed the retaliation of the other species."
Eventually the gods made humans who would live in respect and gratitude and humility… "they were the people who were sustained upon the earth."
Our world is threatened. It needs saving. It is broken. Fragmented. And torn apart by greed.
Our world needs to be made whole again.
I don’t have all the answers, about how we can go about bringing wholeness to a fragmented world.
But I think it would help if we could learn to recognize every single thing for what it is: a precious, holy, sacred gift from our generous God.
And I think it would help if we could learn to be grateful, and humble, in light of all that our generous God has given us.
And maybe then, we can learn to trust; and maybe then, we can learn to take only what we need, and care for one another, and care for the earth.
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