Love and Truth meet in the street, Right Living and Whole Living embrace and kiss! Truth sprouts green from the ground, Right Living pours down from the skies! Oh yes! God gives Goodness and Beauty; our land responds with Bounty and Blessing. – Psalm 85:10-15 (The Message)
The Psalmist proclaims future salvation: Creation and humanity restored, renewed. Flourishing, bountiful—all in harmonious balance. Love and Truth, Right Living (righteousness) and Whole Living (peace) share an intimate bond witnessed by all. In the nutrient-rich soil of faithfulness, refreshed by rains of righteousness, the land responds: blessed truth bountifully sprouting forth.
Living as we do in a time of extremes—rhetoric and weather, conflict and climate—this Psalm offers a utopian glimpse. Imagine all Creation transformed: both landscape and humanity. Creation’s redemption sustained by interdependence and symbiosis, a self-perpetuating cycle of steadfast love and righteousness.
Plucked as they are from a Psalm of petition, these verses show our spiritual ancestors likewise longed for a change of climate in their time: awaiting righteous Right Living and peaceable Whole Living, in a world dominated by corruption and cruelty. As with them, so with us: the land responds with flood, fire, famine. In the nutrient-stripped soil, we sow seeds of apathy watered by a rain of blood. We harvest the same.
Yet God says…
It’s not too late for climate change.
While we wait for change, God waits for us to transform—for a time when we meet with a kiss instead of a fist, truth and steadfast love sprouting up green, all Creation flourishing. Through and with God, this kind of climate change is promised and possible.
Prayer
Transform us into seeds of love and sowers of truth, watered with righteousness. Oh yes! May we witness the beautiful blossoming of Bounty and Blessing.
