Fires, Pandemics, Hurricanes Have More in Common than You Think. How? Here's How.

 

Holy Moley!  Can you believe it?  We’ve reached 28 storms so far, and we still have a month to go.   And heck, now with Hurricane Zeta, eleven of the 28 have hit us, in the States. That’s never happened like ever!   And if anything, the weather folks tell us, next year it’s likely to get worse not better.  And the fires out West, they’re still going strong and it looks like they’re not going to end anytime soon either.

And then we have the pandemic and that’s getting worse too.  What is going on?  How did it come to this?   Are we just having a run of really bad luck or is something deeper going on?    Are there things going on with us that have led our world, our nation into this mess.   In these words, God says, well, yes.  In too many ways we are becoming the authors of our own demise.   But the problem goes deeper than people simply changing a behavior mom here or there or getting an electric car or solar panels.  No, God tells us.  The problem goes into the very heart of who we are, who we yearn to be, and all the wrong directions we take to get there.   So how did we get here?  More importantly, how do we get out of here to someplace healthier, happier, better?  In these words, God shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what God has to say. 

Jeremiah 2:1-8, 23-32

Pandemics, hurricanes, wildfires.   What is going on?   In these words, God is telling you.   People’s desire to be desired is killing them.  And why?  So few grasp how intensely, passionately they are desired already.

These words I just shared did you notice?  They get a little racy in the middle.   In fact, I didn’t share the raciest parts.  I wanted to keep it at least PG-13.   When this prophet talks about Israel disconnecting from God, he compares it to someone with a sexual desire that has gone totally out of control, even like an animal in heat.  But God isn’t giving that language just for shock value.  God is trying to help you understand where everything goes wrong for well, everyone.  

You see, ultimately in the end, every decision you make about pretty much everything comes down to a desire to be desired.   Now, it may not always get as intense as the desire you have to go to bed with somebody, but it falls along the same spectrum.   You see, we all yearn to be valued, adored, appreciated.  The list goes on.  But you can’t give that to yourself.  You can try, but it doesn’t work.  No, that has to come from outside of you, from someone or something.  

And when you get it, it feels awesome.   Your boss tells you that you did a incredible job.  Your kid gives you a hug.  You use your money to buy something nice, that makes you feel good.  But whatever it is, is it ever enough?  It can feel that way in the moment, but it doesn’t last.  Heck, why does advertising exist?   It exists to remind you that you don’t yet have all you desire.  Now what does that have to do with a pandemic or a hurricane?  It has everything to do with it.   

Someone asked one of the first billionaires, a guy named J. Paul Getty, a simple question.  The person asked him.  “How much is enough?”   And what did Getty say?  He said.  “A little bit more.”    But that’s not only true of him, it’s true of everyone in one sense or the other.  We’re never satisfied, not really.  So, we think.  Just a little bit more.      

So, we know, in fact, we’ve known for decades that our desire for more is creating changes, changes that make hurricanes stronger; that make wildfires worse, that threaten to wreck the planet.  Yet still, we can’t stop.  We always need a little bit more of, well, everything.  And where did this flu come from?  It comes from the fact that human beings continue to take up more and more of the planet, and as we do, we face viruses we’ve never faced before.  And yes, we know that danger too, yet still we can’t stop.  Why?  Well, we want a little bit more.

But what’s behind the appetite, the hunger for more?  It’s this yearning, this desire for worth, for value, for something to give us value.  But it never works.  Jeremiah paints that reality in a brutal way as he talks Israel going after worthless things and becoming worthless themselves.   You see that’s what we do.  We give worth to something or someone or some ambition or goal that doesn’t have that worth. It may be a good thing.  It’s just not the ultimate thing.   But we promote it like it is.  We put a weight on it that it can never bear, and then when it collapses, we collapse.   And you can’t get away from this desire.  It’s how you’re built.    So how do you not let it destroy you?   You understand that what you desire, you already have. 

 A week or so ago, I caught a film from a few years ago called About Time.  It’s about this man who can travel back into the past, and it’s a lot of fun.  But the scene that I remember most has nothing to do with that.  No, the main character’s sister is recovering in the hospital from a car accident.   She and her boyfriend had an argument, and she drank too much, and she got behind the wheel.  Thankfully, no one got hurt badly.  But her brother and his wife know that his sister has to make some changes.  She has to leave this man who leads her to feel worthless.  She has to walk away from the alcohol that seems like it’s comforting her but is actually destroying her.  So, what do they do?  

They simply sit there in the hospital with her, and they say.  “We’re not leaving until you’re ready to talk about what needs to change.”  So, she goes to sleep for a bit, and wakes up, and they’re still there, smiling at her, with faces smitten in love for her.   Every time she wakes up, they’re still there, still smitten.  It happens again and again.  They won’t leave.   And she gets it.  These people really, really love me, so much they’ll sit here for hours adoringly staring at me.   And as she sees their intense, passionate desire for her, their almost irrational adoration, she realizes.  With people that love me like this, I can live without this guy. I can walk away from the alcohol.  I can turn to something better.   And of course, what makes that scene wonderful is that it could never happen, not like that.  No one can stare adoringly at someone for hours, except in the movies.  Yet you see it, and you love it.  Because you think.   Wouldn’t it be awesome to experience that, to have someone love me like that, to be that irresistibly, irrevocably smitten with me?     Yet here’s the tragedy of what Jeremiah is telling Israel and us.  You have that, and you don’t even realize it.  

I never knew a show like “Say Yes to the Dress” existed until I got married.  Now I have seen more episodes than I can count.  And I gotta admit, I’ve liked them.  When you see that bride come out in that dress that makes her look beautiful, that expresses her dream for what she yearns for that day to be, when she can say yes to the dress, it’s thrilling.  You feel so happy for her.   And why?   You want everyone to have a moment where they feel beautiful like that, where they look in the eyes of someone smitten in love for them, where they can wear something that celebrates that the dream that has come true, at least for a little bit.   In fact, it’s so special, lots of folks keep those dresses.  Heck, my wife has kept hers.   Why?  It’s a way of holding onto that day, the magic of that love, the possibility of the fairy tale really coming true. 

And God knows that yearning.  Its why God gave the words to Jeremiah that ended the passage we read today.   God says.  “Can a girl forget her ornaments or a bride her attire?  Yet my people have forgotten me, days without number.”    God is saying.  Don’t you see?  I adore you like that, like a groom adores the bride on her wedding day.  And you have broken my heart.  And why do we break God’s heart?   We forget or maybe we never got it, that God loves us like that.  So, we look for love in all the wrong places, places that can never fill the void we have.

But this God can.  This God adores you, desires you, wants you, delights in you more than any lover could.  And you can never come to the end of God’s desire for you.  In fact, heaven will simply be discovering that desire more and more and more without end.   

When our son Patrick was born, someone gave us the children’s book by Nancy Tillman.  Do you know it, the one called: “On the NightYou Were Born?”   People like to think it’s about parents adoring their kid.  It’s not.   It’s about the ultimate parent adoring you.   The poem that Nancy Tillman wrote goes something like this:

On the night you were born, the moon smiled with such wonder that the stars peeked in to see you and the night wind whispered, “Life will never be the same.”

Because there had never been anyone like you… ever in the world. So enchanted with you were the wind and the rain, that they whispered the sound of your wonderful name.

It sailed through the farmland High on the breeze…Over the ocean…And through the trees…
Until everyone heard it and everyone knew of the one and only ever you.

When the polar bears heard, they danced until dawn. From faraway places, the geese flew home. The moon stayed up until morning next day. And none of the ladybugs flew away.

So, whenever you doubt just how special you are and you wonder who loves you, how much and how far, Listen for geese honking high in the sky. (They’re singing a song to remember you by.) Or notice the bears asleep at the zoo. (It’s becau they’ve been dancing all night for you!) Or drift off to sleep to the sound of the wind. (Listen closely… it’s whispering your name again!)….

For never before in story or rhyme (not even once upon a time) has the world ever known a you, my friend, and it never will, not ever again…Heaven blew every trumpet And played every horn
On the wonderful, marvelous Night you were born.

Do you see who she is describing. She is describing God’s love for you?   God died for you because God would pay any price to be with you, to have you in his presence forever, not because God needs you.  No, just because God loves you as passionately and intensely as that.  And God created you with that same desire, a desire only that love can fulfill.  And the more you know that love, the more it frees you to enjoy all the good things of life for what they are and no more.  Why?  You realize that you already have what you most desire, what you have desired  You have the infinite, inexpressibly beautiful love of the only One that ultimately matters, the one whose joyful, exuberant, unending love holds us all!