Fourth Sunday after Trinity AD 2025

St. Paul says in his Letter to the Romans: “The earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.” All creation expects something, eagerly, in excitement – something great, good and wonderful.

Is this what we feel when we look around us? Or is it rather that the expectation we perceive is borne of fear, some inexplicable premonition that something bad is about to happen? Wars, natural disasters, famine, disease… all this has accompanied the mankind throughout the ages, even when it has sometimes seemed that we have overcome it, have finally learned something, have developed to the point that we no longer depend on the whims of nature.

The answer to the question of why this is so, why “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,” is quite unpleasant: it is because of us. Not because of each of us personally, but of us as humanity, whom God has placed in charge of dressing and keeping His creation, but who has so often turned against both the creation and its Creator.

 Man tends to think that he is entitled to something, and he is eager to demand his rights. We know what consequences this leads to: in our small everyday lives, perhaps just stepping on each other’s toes, but in the big world, to unspeakable suffering.

And the creation waits… Waits eagerly for the “manifestation of the sons of God.” God assures us in His Word that this expectation is not hopeless, because we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God.”

We are waiting for true life and peace and justice that will triumph over death and hatred and injustice – first in each of us personally and finally in all of God’s creation, which will “be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”