I’m sorry to say, but watching BP CEO Tony Hayward being skewered early today for more than 7 hours in front of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee made me feel a little sorry for him.
Yeah, I thought about all the millions of dollars he likely makes as BP’s chief. And I thought about how when he left the hearing room he likely just shook off the uncomfortableness of it all once he settled into his private jet, got a massage, ate a 5-star lunch on fine china, and hit a round of golf on a world-renowned course with a few other sympathetic CEOs.
But then I also thought about all of those fishermen sitting at home right now instead of doing what they, and the generations before them, have done and love most.
I thought of all the people whose livelihoods are tied to that water and create an interconnected economy that will be cruelly decimated for generations to come.
And every inch of my heart goes out to the families of the 11 men who never escaped that dark, fiery night.
Not to mention the wildlife. Who crusades for them?
No one wins.
This is why midway through the Capitol Hill hearing, I recalled a Bible scripture I’d come across Sunday at church that praises God’s creation of the sea and all the wondrous things in it.
So in the midst of all this despair and death in the Gulf, I’ll like to dedicate this scripture because it seems so apropos.
“O Lord, what a variety of things you have made!
In wisdom you have made them all.
The earth is full of your creatures.
Here is the ocean, vast and wide,
Teeming with life of every kind,
both great and small.
See the ships sailing along,
and Leviathan, which you made to play in the sea.
Every one of these depends on you
to give them their food as they need it.
When you supply it, they gather it.
You open your hand to feed them,
and they are satisfied.
But if you turn away from them, they panic.
When you take away their breath,
they die and turn again to dust.
When you send your spirit, new life is born
to replenish all the living of the earth.
May the glory of the Lord last forever!
Psalm 105: 24-31
New Living translation
RUMINATIONS 