Deliver us from the elements

I shoveled snow for the second time this week and it seems like Winter has arisen from his stupor and realized that the stage had already been set by Autumn for his entrance. It has been cold and snowy the past week (with one day of relief) and it looks like it will be that way for a while. In my high school days I listened to a lot of new wave and punk (mostly British) and was exposed to quite a few different bands. There was a band called XTC that penned these words:

We can plant a seed
And watch it grow
Food enough to fill a table
Running water down an overflow
Eat as much as we are able
But would the fruit turn ripe
If the rains had never been?

Oh Lord deliver us from the elements
We at your mercy and your reverence
Oh Lord deliver us from the elements
We've no defense we are impotent

You can travel far to distant lands
Some so hot no man could bear
You can conquer peaks with winds of sand
Where Mother Nature didn't care
Would not our world turn cold
If the sun refused to shine

And when the world grows old
And we know more than our brains can hold
Nature will be law
Well we're as helpless now as we've ever been before
Would not our world turn cold
If the sun refused to shine

The chorus is a prayer and an admission. The prayer, that the Creator deliver us from His created is a unique one and one that needs to be uttered in this post-Genesis-3 world. It is also a realization that God is Benevolence and has a plan for us that involves our success and good future. Through Him, with Him, and in Him we have this appeal knowing that, if He so desired, this awful in its beauty creation could crush us in an instant.

This song goes through my head as I shovel the driveway knowing that the exposed black underneath is only possible by His grace and mercy. If it was ever withdrawn there would be such terror in my life. The chorus is mine and ours.

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