Today's lesson is about the majesty and mystery of God. It is about our creatureliness and God's might. It is about that which is holy, grave, dreadful, incalculable, incomprehensible, unspeakable, tremendous, awesome. It is about something which we hardly have any sense of in our age. Just take that last adjective, awesome. It has been reduced to a description of a slam dunk or a video performance. We have lost a sense of awe and dread before the holy.

We can see by our treatment of nature that we have lost a sense of the holy. We like to say that we tame nature. We use it, we control it, we even abuse it, rather than stand in awe of it. Sacred groves are seen as so many board feet of lumber, mountains are viewed as deposits of minerals or tourist attractions, and the ocean becomes a sourc…