Dominating the skyline of 1200-year-old Hamburg, Germany, stands the towering ruins of St. Nikolai Church.  At the time of its reconstruction in 1874, it was the world’s tallest building. Today it is a blackened skeleton of its former glory and a haunting reminder of one of the most devastating bombing campaigns of World War II. In July 1943, the Allied Combined Bomber Offensive launched Operation Gomorrah, a multi-day campaign that culminated in some of the war’s most devastating firebombing.

Who or what is Jesus? 

According to author Martin Mosebach, “The early Christians knew that the Christian message was Jesus himself. The essence of the Gospels’ new, more profound, and more compelling picture of God was that God had become flesh, present among us.” (“The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy” (Ignatius Press). There was much confusion about Jesus’ precise relationship to God.

To this day, I can recall watching “Predators of the Mara,” a rerun of “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” on a quiet Sunday afternoon in the early 1980s. In that episode, a cheetah chases down and kills a young wildebeest. It is a remarkably brutal scene of struggle for the wildebeest to get free from the cat’s jaws locked on its neck. The horror I felt as I watched one animal kill another was tempered only by the calming voice of Marlin Perkins, who explained that the herd was ultimately stronger because predators in the Maasai Mara National Reserve helped to cull the sick and the weak. This was natural selection — survival of the fittest.

When life begins to fall apart, people often begin looking for God. Illness, injury, and the proximity of death tend to strip away our illusions of control. For many who are hospitalized — especially those facing the end of life — the heart opens in ways it may not have in decades. This vulnerability becomes holy ground, a final opportunity for grace to break through.
 

The garden can be a metaphor for our relationship with God. He is the “master gardener” who helps us through our struggles and lovingly celebrates our triumphs. The same can be said of our ups and downs in the garden; Colorado has experienced years of water deficiency, but recent rains have been a true blessing. All one has to do is look to the mountains or across the prairie to see the rich color of green!