3^rd week after Pentecost: Wildness

A wild animal may trample things.

(Job 39:15)

Two of our grandchildren suffered sting ray bites to the bottom of their foot. Blood gushed out. They limped across the sand towards the ocean house with anguish and pain, even tears. We learned the routine. Daddy brings out tub after tub of hot, hot water, in which to place his daughter’s bleeding bitten foot while the poison continues to make its way up the wounded leg. Within two hours the poison subsides, and the pain becomes bearable.

That’s the thing about creation—it is wild and dangerous. It’s nothing like Grizzly River Run at Disneyland that only pretends to be scary. Real things have risk. You can get hurt in the ocean. You get hurt in life—real life with its complex relationships and multiple demands. Reality humbles us.

That’s what happened to Job when God showed up and laid before him the wonders and wildness of His Creation: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? …When the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” And then God speaks of the wildness of his creatures: the wild ass, and wild ox, and wild ostrich, and wild animals that run around and trample things (Jb 38-41).

In spite of creation’s dangers, we made our way back into the ocean. Only this time, we were not so sure of ourselves. Who knows what lurks beneath the waves? We learned the sting ray shuffle where by you shuffle your feet in hopes you won’t step on one. Owen said Papa already had the sting ray shuffle. Maybe that is at least something of what the Bible means when it speaks of “the fear of the Lord.” There’s no more strutting around. Like Jacob of old, there is a strange limp in our walk (Gn 32:31).