Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O LORD.
For some reason, these lines from Psalm 36 caught my eye this morning, specifically the part about Yahweh saving "humans and animals alike." This isn't the only place where the Bible speaks of God's concern for the earth's creatures. According to Jesus, not a single sparrow falls to the ground "apart from your Father." And in what it my personal favorite, the book of Jonah ends with God rebuking Jonah and arguing for animals. In the very last verse of the book God says, "And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?"
"...And also many animals?" What an odd way to end. Or maybe it only seems odd because people of faith tend to focus on souls and heaven to the point that we've forgotten about God's love for creation, for bodies and such. The Apostle Paul speaks of creation itself awaiting its redemption. And obviously God thought creation was a good thing when God created it.
I've been reading a wonderful book by Barbara Brown Taylor entitled An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. It has some interesting chapter titles such as "The Practice of Wearing Skin - Incarnation" and "The Practice of Walking the Earth - Groundedness." In these and other chapters she notes how often we miss the sacred, miss God, because we are so unaccustomed to looking for God in the created, messiness of earthly, fleshy life.
"You save humans and animals alike, O LORD." If this is true, as the psalmist insists, then surely God is present and at work in the garden, in the backyard, in the day to day living of our lives. Surely God is more present than we often realize because we forget that God is not contained in the "houses" we build for that purpose.
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