The cycle of God:

God: You can’t rule yourselves

A&E (first humans): Watch us.

God: Alright, I will, and when you make a hopeless hash of everything, I’ll shove it aside and bring in what I meant to all along.

How could anyone miss that UNLESS they had also missed another cycle, one that plays out each year:

“Even the stork in the sky knows its seasons; The turtledove and the swift and the thrush keep to the time of their return.” (Psalm 148:7)

Is there a link between that verse and the above ‘cycle of God?’ Seems to be, as is evident from the remainder of the verse:

“But my own people do not understand the judgment of Jehovah.”

“Seasons of the stork” parallels the “judgment of Jehovah.” It was a thought to be gleaned, not stated directly, from the Watchtower Study article “Learn More About Jehovah Through His Creation.” (March 2023)

“His invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are perceived by the things made,” served as theme scripture. (Romans 1:20)

Therefore it helps to get one’s head out of the city, where ‘creation’ is obscured by schedules and smokestacks. Even I was in my 50s before I realized that on a grey day, a far-off cloud seemingly connected as if by bands to the earth meant that it was raining there. Hemmed in by city/suburb, I’d had few opportunities to take in that big picture.

What does that instruct as to God? Trust farmer Mort to tell us (we were visiting his congregation). Commenting on the verse that God makes it rain on the righteous and the wicked, he pointed out that his neighbor gets just as much rain as him, “even though he uses foul language.”

Someone recalled how birds build their nest, but then having done that, do little else, for they are birds. It recalled a talk (by a speaker in that Hall) on how people can be like that, devoting major portions of their lives (sometimes all) to building the most luxurious nest—whereas what might be better is build a simple nest then use all that excess time/capacity for greater things.

Then there was a sis who works as a nurse and all day long must deliver anti-depressant medications as though they were M&Ms. But in Japan, she says, they don’t even begin drug treatment for depression until after a period of “forest bathing” gives them a head start or even replacement.

My wife’s favorite scripture (one of them) was not in the study article: “ A bull well knows its buyer, And a donkey the manger of its owner; But Israel does not know me, My own people do not behave with understanding.” But Psalm 148:7 is close enough that the two of them in the same study might be redundant.

What I liked, and I almost stuck it in even though it doesn’t directly fit, but didn’t—was Bro Malenfont’s recent kickback at those ‘physical men’ who say they have no need of the crutch that is God. ‘Of course you do!’ he said. They will be senile or in diapers in not too many years, and hobbled even if they avoid such indignities. How can anyone with those prospects say they need no crutch?

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