PREAMBLE | ANOTHER BEGINNING
There is something wonderfully human about starting over. A new year, a new house, a new job, a new relationship, perhaps even a new church. We imagine that changing enough things around us might finally change something within us. Sometimes it does. Other times, we discover that a new address is considerably easier to obtain than a new disposition.
This past week gave me plenty to think about. I found myself walking where history still speaks, sitting across tables where fairness and obligation are vigorously debated, then returning home to Anchorage, where warm Chinook winds were rearranging October. Somewhere between the old stones, negotiating tables, and familiar mountains, the same thought kept returning. History has a long memory, agreements require more than signatures, and even the weather occasionally attempts a change of operations without proper notice.
The termination dust may retreat up the mountains overnight, but the ground beneath it remains exactly what it was.
This week's Torah reading brings us to the aftermath of the Flood. The violence and corruption that filled the earth have been judged. Noah survives. The ark rests. The waters recede. Creation seems ready for another beginning.
Then Scripture reveals something extraordinary.
God acknowledges that the human heart remains inclined toward evil, yet promises never again to destroy all living creatures by a flood.
The very condition that helped explain the judgment in Genesis 6 remains present in Genesis 8. The world has changed considerably.
Humanity, apparently, has retained much of its original operating agreement.
And still, God establishes a covenant.
Why would God make a lasting covenant with people who might fail again?
Perhaps the deeper question is whether God's faithfulness ever depended upon our ability to guarantee perfect performance. And if God preserves a world inhabited by imperfect people, what responsibilities accompany the privilege of another beginning?
That is where Paul meets us in Colossians. He calls the church to put on compassion, kindness, humility, patience, forgiveness, and love.
Not because everyone around us has finally learned to behave, but because belonging to Christ ought to change how we live among them.
God gives humanity another beginning.
Paul teaches the Christian community how to live as people who have received one.
Perhaps that is the trouble with starting over. We are often eager for God to change the season, while considerably less enthusiastic about allowing God to change us.
