Dogs, Hurricanes and Thoughts about Providence

Dogs, Hurricanes, and Thoughts About Providence

Sermon, October 6, 2024

1. Dogs. So, why do dogs turn in circles before lying down? One good turn deserves another!

As one humorist observed: A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.

We just missed St. Francis Day - October 4. Had I been thinking clearly, I might have suggested inviting dogs to church.

Dogs are amazing, aren’t they? They have the uncanny ability to infuriate one - like Blue, my husky, who on our walks  most mornings will find the absolute worst thing to eat … and eat it …

At the same time, they are amazing companions, loyal as the humorist observed. Plus, they turn in circles before lying down. Of course our job is to reciprocate, or to more than reciprocate.

My friends Heather and David have been holding vigil with their dog, Ember, who has been suffering seizures day and night, and they really don’t know why. But they love Ember. Ember is part of the family.

Just a few days ago, near Kingsport, Tennessee, firemen rescued a dog that had been stranded twenty feet up a tree. Twenty feet, and how did that happen? The Nolichucky River swelled as Hurricane Helene passed through the area. Twenty feet, and the dog must have clung to the branches of the tree as the water receded, because there she was.

When I was a small boy, a long long time ago, my parents would drive us through those East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Smoky Mountains to the beach in South Carolina. There was no east/west interstate in those days to ease the drive, and the winding of the old two lane road took all day, maybe thirteen or fourteen hours. (These days, with interstates, the trip takes seven hours.)

My parents would gather the four of us up - all under seven years old - at four in the morning, gently place us in the back of the station wagon with blankets and pillows, and drive us across those mountains to the beach. We would arrive by evening … and not just with us kids in tow, but a boat, too.

I have no idea why my dad insisted on bringing his boat, but he did. Until one time, through those mountains, on the twisting roads, the trailer got a flat tire. He changed the flat, and a few miles later, it happened again. A second flat, and who has one trailer spare, much less two? Angry and frustrated, he pulled over, got out of the car, unhooked the trailer, and we drove off, leaving the boat behind. For all I know, the boat is still there.

Interstates 26 and 40 are now both closed. I am told, it might take two years before they reopen. Hurricane Helene.

It takes twice, three times as long to get anywhere in those twisty mountains without an interstate, and I wonder how the people of Asheville, North Carolina, will get supplies to rebuild - no just to live? Food, staples, roofing material? Even now they can’t drink their water without boiling it.

I spoke to a friend in North Carolina a couple days ago. This is her report:

The storm has been devastating. We had very minimal damage, but unfortunately, our family members to the west did not favor so well and many of them have lost everything. We are rolling up our sleeves and opening our doors and our hearts, but it is true devastation.

She continues by saying how they are praying for those who lost loved ones, and of course they are. And so should we do. Pray … and of course give.

Here is where I consider Job. Fabled Job. We didn’t hear chapter one read this morning, just chapter two, but the first chapter details Job’s loss of his children. Just like many in North Carolina a week ago, Job’s adult children were eating a meal in one house, under one roof, when a storm blew through, the roof fell, and killed them all. All of Job’s children.

Job yet was loyal to God, did not blame God, though how he managed restraint is beyond me.

And if not God, then why do we call them, Acts of God? Perhaps we shouldn’t. Acts of Earth? Or, in this world of climate change, Acts of Earth in concert with Humanity, for we are, of course, complicit in our own destruction. As we have been throughout our history, with wars and such.

But I digress. And I do not understand. Acts of God, and why a dog twenty feet up in a tree is spared while hundreds of people are not. If this can happen to them, then it can happen to us. Life is precarious, fragile even.

Of course, so many of us know this truth already. Have witnessed that, experienced life’s fragility.

What is man that thou art mindful of him?

In her recent book, Reading Genesis, Marilynne Robinson writes about the contradiction, the contradiction we are mostly incapable of understanding: the incompatibility of God-given human freedom over against God’s inscrutable (my word) intention. Providence. The two conflicting, one against another? Or simpatico. Or, what?

We cannot know the mind of God unless God reveals it to us.

But God has revealed it to us, though still we have difficulty appreciating it, that otherwise mysterious mind of God …

Jesus, speaking to the religious leaders, is not suggesting new or strong laws regarding marriage and divorce. He is simply laying out what was already on the books, as they say - that God’s plan is inscrutable, and that we, as humans, are frail.

We are frail, in our faulty selves, of living up to standard, aren’t we? Divorce happens, and we accept that. Division happens. Climate change and fierce hurricanes happen.

So no, I do not understand our human free will over against the sovereignty of God, the plan of God, Providence.

I know they both exist, human agency and Providence, and I also know that our freedom trips us up regularly - and that God still respects and honors that freedom.

At the end of the day, all we can really know is this, and that is what God asks of us, this simple thing: kindness to one another, and love.

It is the rescue of a dog stranded twenty feet high.

It is, as the prophet said, to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.