Scripps Sunday #110

A colleague recently shared a quote from a book called Turning to Stone, by geologist Marcia Bjornerud. She shared that it underscored that God’s time is not simply an abstract, philosophical concept. It is written in the bones of our planet, and if, like geologists, we persist in learning how to read on such a massive chronological scale, it can afford us amazement, and perhaps something approaching hope. Here are some words about geological time:

"The rocks around us tell us that change happens by violence but mostly by patience; that survival entails the power to endure and the wisdom to recognize that the world can alter in a single day; that being thrown into even the harshest and most unfamiliar of environments can lead to beautiful transfigurations.

How astonishing to know that palm trees once shaded a sweltering Arctic; that the summit of Mt. Everest is studded with fragments of ancient aquatic creatures; that an inland sea filled with plesiosaurs and mosasaurs used to stretch from the Rockies to the Appalachian Mountains; that even now, although we cannot feel it, all around us the ground is shifting, folding, sinking, rising, rifting. No matter that our own little sliver of time on this planet is hopelessly narrow; the things we can learn about it are virtually limitless."

None of us can witness geological transformations directly. Yet from the beginning of time, God has so loved and moved in the world that creation flourished and re-flourished over and over, each time in a way it never could before. Right here and now, it is hard to imagine that the seismic transformations we are registering all too acutely will bring forth a new creation, whether in our own lives (as you think about your senior year and beyond) or in the world. But for the sliver of time that we inhabit on this planet, together, we can try to trust that this is so by the grace of God.