And, had not the Lord put a limit to those days, not a single soul would escape; but, for the sake of God’s own chosen people, he did limit them.
as quick as disaster
a sighting of joy
flitting among the ashes
with a twinkling song
voiced overwherever poison
has been clapped away
a death-frightened child flies
well into borrowed time
a rescue-partnerwho could know
a wall could fall so fast
a heart grow large so fast
a suffering cease so fast
a meaning arrive so full
This verse reminds us of a previous scene of Jesus and children, when cutting limbs short was the way to go. Losing a hand or foot or eye was touted as a way to rescue one’s self from a worse consequence.
Here G*D cuts time short.
It might also be said that Jesus is cut short.
All in all, this chapter is not looking for a replacement of creation, but a new way of engaging it. What is looked for is a cutting short of the principalities and powers in religion, state, and self that there be a blossoming and fruiting that will multiply the blessings of Creation (“It is good”) and Baptism (“You are beloved”) thirty-fold, sixty-fold, even a hundred-fold.
This suggests the Mercy extended by this cutting short is intended to shift what creation has become back toward its intended wholeness. There is no need for a late, great, left-behind planet earth or other doomsday mechanism. The realm of hierarchy and privilege are to be cut short, which will leave openings for a previous way to straightway reorganize through a model of mutual service with one another rather than enslavement of one another.
Reopening the option of service puts us back on track with seeds that grow of their own accord rather than the forced boom-and-bust cycle that we go through when our partnership with one another and creation has been subverted by what it profits someone, right now, to take advantage of accumulated resources and insure an imbalance in honoring an innate goodness/belovedness in others. When people become economic objects we are on our way to where fires never go out.
It is questionable whether this happens by some fiat from G*D that avoids the hard work of accepting a Jubilee.