Charles Beebe was born in Brooklyn in 1877. He was fascinated by the world around him and became a naturalist. He was eighteen when his first article was published. Beebe wrote about a small North American songbird, the brown creeper. After three years at Columbia University, Beebe went on to become the Assistant Curator of Birds at what is now the Bronx Zoo. By 1903 he was full Curator. Then he and his wife began to travel the world gathering specimens and observing birds in Mexico, Trinidad and Venezuela. In 1909 the Bebees led a year and a half long expedition to study pheasants around the world, publishing a four-volume monograph of their travels and discoveries.

But the world is more than birds and Beebe wanted to explore and consider the heights and depths. And so in 1927 the bird expert went down to the sea with a diving helmet. Not satisfied with the depths that could be achieved with the helmet Beebe began to discuss the possibilities of a deep-sea vessel with a friend and fellow naturalist, Theodore Roosevelt. But it was Otis Barton, the inventor of the bathysphere who provided the means to make the journey. In 1928 Beebe agreed to test Barton's vessel and descended a half a mile below the ocean's surface, the deepest dive made to that date by a human being.

Beebe knew the birds of the air and had dwelt among things that swim in the deep blue sea but he looked to the heavens as well to find the larger context, the bigger picture of his world. He and Roosevelt had a ritual, a sort of naturalists' Compline. After an evening of exploring the fringes of knowledge they would go out under the stars and look up.

We searched until we found, with or without glasses, the faint, heavenly spot of light-mist beyond the lower corner of corner of the Great Square of Pegasus, when one or the other would recite:
That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda.
It is as large as our Milky Way.
It is one of a hundred million galaxies.
It is 750,000 light-years away.
It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.
After an interval, Colonel Roosevelt would grin at me and say: 'Now I think we are small enough! Let's go to bed.'¹

The words of the prophet Isaiah perform a similar function for us. Lest we think we are either the center of all things or responsible for running the universe the comparison of ourselves to grasshoppers disabuses us of that notion rather quickly.

Even rulers are like grass that rises, withers then blows away. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth, " Isaiah says.

And this is good news because the universe is full of things beyond our numbering and certainly beyond our control, but the One who makes all things promises to renew our strength if we but wait. This is the larger context- God in whom we live and move and have our being. This is the foundation on which we can rest if we will allow ourselves to do so.

The voices of expensive suits spread terror in moderated voices on the Evening news. "The Dow is falling, the Dow is falling," they cry, and we cower. But Isaiah replies, "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth."

Walter Bruggeman, a prominent Old Testament scholar, says that "we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the Good News of God's abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity."

Choosing the right thing is important. God sustain us, but fear degrades and debilitates. We admit this tension in the Baptismal Covenant. You know that short series of renunciations and affirmations? It is a means of sorting out dry grass and things good for eating.

We admit that there is good and there is evil in the cosmos, a God who loves us and the Father of Lies who does not. Then we practice choosing to follow God. We go on to confess that there are powers in the world that degrade and destroy the creatures of God and we renounce those too. So what would it be like if when the suits proclaim the end of the world as we know it, again, this evening, we simply renounced the invitation to panic?

But destructive patterns don't just flash from the TV screen, they lurk deep within us like gigantic, primordial creatures that are sightless but full of teeth. The human heart can carry us far deeper into cold and crushing darkness than any bathysphere. So we admit that there is darkness in our hearts and evil on our minds - from time to time - and we renounce the value of plunging deeper into these things when they swim into our consciousness.

Beebe and Roosevelt looked up to get the bigger picture, and so should we. Isaiah also helps us to get small enough to sleep at night. Here too the Covenant embraces us for we do not simply renounce, we affirm that we mean to embrace. We embrace Christ as our Lord and Savior. We promise to follow and obey Him, to tell others the Good News, and to act like faithful people at our jobs, in the marketplace and as we participate in civic life.

Here is the opportunity in a down market. Here is the challenge when so many are losing their heads. Can we believe not only the words we are hearing from Scripture but the ones that have come out of our own mouths?

Life is far larger than some would have us believe. When we are told that the sky is falling because a line on a graph has turned down, let us remember than the sun will rise new every morning and that we already have more than we need. When the invitation to fall into fear comes. Let's us renounce it.

Our current troubles are nothing new. If one gets nothing else from the Bible we can see that economies did badly, recovered and thrived. We can see that even when entire nations ceased to be, God looked out for His people. Thousands of years of salvation history stretch out before us, years filled with acts of loving kindness more numerous than stars in the sky or fish in the sea. The God who did this is the God who knows every hair on our heads and knit us together in our mother's womb. Before we were born God knew our name and loved us more than even the most beautiful star.

This Good News offers life. Let us not fall into fear but embrace what we have found. Let us not pull back but proclaim with a stronger voice that salvation is not in what we possess but in the One who possesses us.

Now, more than ever, we need to be a beacon on the hill, a lighthouse by the edge of a stormy sea. We need this not just for ourselves but all of those whose boats are swamping, whose hope and strength are failing but are still seeking some light in the distance, some way to the shore.

So let us shore up the lighthouse then stand on the rock at the edge of the sea, cup our hands and shout, "Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth!" AMEN