Gifts in Strange and Terrifying Packages – A Meditation on a Saying from Job

Some of God’s gifts come in strange and terrifying packages. And I was reminded of this earlier this week when I read from the book of Job in the Office of Readings the following lines:

The earth, though out of it comes forth bread,
is in fiery upheaval underneath. Job 28:2

It is a true fact that we live just above a fiery cauldron, separated by a thin membrane of earthly crust rife with cracks through which fire routinely flares in volcanoes in fissures; a crust that is always shifting, and even shaking violently in earthquakes.

And yet, where it not for this violent cauldron beneath us, it seems unlikely that we would have life here at all. Volcanoes and other tectonic activity keep our soil rich and recycled. In this fiery cauldron are brewed some of our most useful minerals, and most beautiful gems. Whole island chains and land masses are formed by eruptions, and geothermal energy is resource we have just begun to tap. Many scientists think too that volcanoes had a profound influence on the formation of an atmosphere in the early Earth period, and that the molten core of the earth has an important influence on the Van Allen belts, a magnetic field that keep harmful radiation portion of the sun’s rays away from the earth’s surface.

Yes, Job had it right, some of God’s gifts come strange packages. The earth’s capacity to bring forth bread is directly connected to the fact that it is on fire beneath. And yet, what a strange and terrifying package this gift comes in. For it  remains true that volcanoes and other seismic activity have claimed enormous  number of lives and property.

Water too, such a rich source of life and blessing, can also turn in a moment to utterly destroyed life in huge numbers. Floods and tsunamis can sweep away huge areas in a moment.

And yet who could ever deny that without water, life would be impossible. Ah water, nothing more life-giving, and nothing more deadly. Some of God’s gifts come in strange and terrifying packages.

I have often wondered why so many cities throughout the world are built on or near floodplains, and along the “ring of fire” with its volcanoes and fault lines. But of course the answer is plain enough. It is in these very areas that some of the richest soil and greatest resources are to be found.

God and nature’s most life giving gifts are but 3° separated from disaster and instant death. We live on the edge of an abyss because that is where life is found.

Such a thin line, really. Mors et vita duello, conflixere mirando! (Death and life compete in a stupendous conflict).  To live is to cheat death.

All the basic elements and forces: earth, air, water and and fire, so death-dealing and yet so life-giving; somehow all part of the great cycle of living and dying that God intends.

Only God is existence itself, the rest of us are contingent beings, and part of a cycle. Only in union with Christ, who said, I am the life, will we ever cheat death. As Fulton Sheen once said, Christ gave the earth the only serious wound it ever received, the wound of an empty tomb. And with Christ, and only with Christ, will we one day give the earth that same wound.

For now, we live above the cauldron, upon a thin crust. Beneath us burns a tremendous fire. But somehow, mysteriously, it is the source of our bread:

The earth, though out of it comes forth bread,
is in fiery upheaval underneath. Job 28:2

Yes, some of God’s greatest gifts come in strange and terrifying packages.