Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Just this last weekend, at our All Saints’ service, we saw a young child receive the sacrament of baptism. It was a lovely sight: marvelous to behold a baby being brought into life of the church through this cleansing with water and anointing of oil.

This scene puts me in mind of the icon of Jesus’ baptism, a picture often painted with sea creatures, reminding us that Jesus sanctified the waters, and that the effects of this activity extend, like the sea, throughout the natural world.

Both of these watery pictures make a tableau with today’s reading from the Wisdom of Sirach, where the sea is a part of a larger imagery encompassing all of creation, including clouds, snow, lightenings, the rainbow, hurricanes and the icy north wind. God is active throughout this account, directing everything that happens: he pours, consumes, amasses, opens, commands, stills. According to Sirach, God is intimately involved in creating, sustaining, and directing everything in the natural world. Why should we doubt God’s power and intention in our individual and collective existence?

On this line, St. Basil the Great wrote a similarly psalmic prayer, blessing the ‘Most high God and Lord of mercy, who ever does with us things great and inscrutable, glorious and awesome, of which there is no measure.’

The bottom line is that God holds all things — our lives, our churches, our world, our salvation — together by his holy will, for ‘He is greater than all his works’. No matter what issues we may be dealing with today (political, social, or personal), we can be sure that God is still good, loving, wise and provident.

‘Terrible is the Lord and very great,
And marvelous is his power.’

Yours in Christ,
Justin