He clothes the lily of the field...

"Meanwhile, and this is why I included my photo of the lily, creation makes a firm statement of the possible; the beauty that resists even long-term drought. Nice one, God. Thanks..."

Here in and around Tampa, we're a couple of years into a long term drought and four months into this year's exacerbated exclamation punctuation to the problem. It's not simply a lack of rain, of course, it's decades of poor water management and greed-fueled development without regard to either ecological balance or the effects of unrestrained construction on our resources, the market, and the future.

I find it interesting that human beings (considered in most religious writings to be the apex of the created order) have and are doing more to destroy this world than every other species combined. It's a truth that - in a way - supports my understanding of divinity. Not that God is cynical, or made a mistake in creating us, so much as the following observation:

• Our predilection to operate as if we stand separate from or outside of creation speaks to our dual nature. We are both spirit and body, temporary and eternal, created and creative, mortal and divine. It's too bad that we typically fail to live in the complete truth of such a definitive quality.

The problem is our refusal to act as if we were gifted with creativity and invention for any other reason than our own self-aggrandizement and self-indulgence. So we rape the soil; we exploit the earth; we overtax the water supply; we "enrich" ourselves at the expense of others; we pollute the atmosphere; we destroy anything and everybody that stands in the way of our own perceived needs.

But we were placed on this sphere by the Creator, charged with the responsibility to take care of the world. In Romans 8 the Apostle Paul suggests that this world waits - hopefully - for us to finally "Get it"... "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."

Well, and especially here around Tampa, creation is still frustrated, still waiting, still subjected to bondage, and still wondering when the very earth itself will begin to experience some of that glorious freedom.

Meanwhile, and this is why I included my photo of the lily, creation makes a firm statement of the possible; the beauty that resists even long-term drought. Nice one, God. Thanks...
- DEREK