Send your Spirit, Lord, to renew the earth (sal. 103)

Biblical reflections of Stanislao Calati*

Taken from the thousand and a thousand needs of the newspaper, we often forget who, of this life, gave us a gift and, provident, keeps it.
We should find some time for ourselves: for our dialogue with God, for the consolation that comes from meditating his Word, source of life, for prayer or for the simple and silent contemplation of its bright mystery.
Let's dwell, every now and then, even for a short moment, in front of the wonderful show of nature: the majesty of the mountains whose peaks, candid of snow, shine in the sun; To the game of lights and colors, which the sun describes in the sky of a dawn or a sunset, when changing the panorama of the seasons, to the gradually wider or shorter rims that the sun traces in the sky, in the turn of the seasons, to changing the moon, which in an endless lap is born, grows and dies, to be reborn again ...
Nature is not God, he is the "totally other", and we do not exchange creation with the creator, but in the beauty and goodness of nature, the Lord leaves traces that lead us to him in a short and fleeting emotion, in an intuition that lasts the time of an instant, but that makes us feel God close, present and concrete as ever.
Let us still dwell to rethink the benefits that God has given us during our existence and, above all, to his infinite goodness, which, having called us to life in the limited space and in the finished time, which we now complete, has prepared us, in Christ, an eternal residence in his home, in the perpetual light, beyond the darkness of death; We will then say joyful, with the psalmist: bless my soul, the Lord; And all that is in me, bless its holy name.

Psalm 103

Bless the Lord, my soul!
You are so great, Lord, my God!
How many are your works, Lord!
You made them all with wisdom;
The earth is full of your creatures.

Take their breath: they die,
and return to their dust.
Send your spirit, they are created,
And renew the face of the earth.

Be forever the glory of the Lord;
He rejoiced the Lord of his works.
My song is welcome to him,
I will rejoice in the Lord.

* Stanislao Calati is a professor of Old Testament in the theological biblical course for the formation of evangelical religion teachers of the reformed evangelical church of the Canton of Ticino.