Category: The Beauty of God’s Creation

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Creation Glory

Dear Sister,

Sitting on the beach in the late afternoon with the foamy  water lapping at my feet, looking at the vast swathe of sea and sky, listening to the cries of gulls, watching baby crabs dig their holes, schools of teeny fishes darting this way and that, the bodies of lifeless jellyfish lying on the sand, my mind tends to wander and be astounded at the bigness and limitlessness of the universe. That ball of fire we call sun begins its apparent disappearing act this side of the globe, yet still lighting that other sphere we call moon, causing the great sweep of dark, rippling water beneath to shimmer and glisten in the night. The sheer creativity involved in this place we live, this tiny speck of seemingly never-ending pulsing of life and silence of death can overwhelm. If I think too long and hard it renders me feeling insignificant.

My daughter who has special needs is a creator. She designs and draws and paints and writes. She does these things with paper and pencils, brushes and tempera paint. Those things we bought at a store. The store’s buyer purchased them through a distributor who obtained them through a manufacturer, who procured raw materials from other distributors, and on and on. What is common amongst all these players, including my daughter, is the fact that everything made was made from something else. Nothing was made out of nothing.

We cannot fathom the creation of something out of nothing. Our brains cannot process such musings. Scientists have forever tried to explain the origin of our universe, some attributing it to a self-existent, never-created God, but most have tried (with widespread public success) to accommodate creation to human reasoning which often ends sounding quite foolish and unreasonable.

The Scriptures tell us that God, without beginning or ending, created our intricate, spectacular, staggering universe with all its particulars, seen and unseen, known and unknown out of nothing. Listen to a few TED talks, watch Animal Planet, National Geographic and be amazed at our world conceived and spoken into being by our almighty God. Look up in the night sky and ponder the vastness of the universe beyond imagination. Sit with me on the beach and envision the unseen creatures roaming the inky depths of the ocean. Contemplate the immobilizing power of the hurricane, the flood, the earthquake. Reflect on molecules and cells, DNA, proteins, electrons and all those things my mind fails to grasp.

Beyond all these magnificent and sometimes unnerving results of omnipotence, there remains a quiet and unfathomable creation the physicists, the biologists, the chemists, the astronomers cannot see with their microscopes and telescopes. Almighty and fearful God of this universe, condescending to His creation, choosing a people for Himself created in His image for His own possession, brings to life within us a new heart, a heart after His own heart. Looking at our own darkness before Christ possessed us only to create in us new fleshy hearts responsive to His Spirit, we are the most amazing of all His creations. This incredible world will burn up, but the new creation He made in His people will never be consumed. We will live forever and ever and ever—in His presence—to His praise and glory—in a new heaven and earth of His own creation.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”
2 Corinthians 5:17

Be still, dear Sister. Think about these things.  Be overwhelmed. Be humbled. Know that our God, He is God.

Worshipping Him with you,

Cherry

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The Gift of Creation and Its Salvation

Right after High school I attended a Bible school that lies in the Adirondack mountains in upstate New York. Every opportunity I could get I would grab my bike and ride along the snake-like country road to climb the trails in a nearby park.  I hiked up to the top…or close too it if people were there…and choose a rock to place myself and backpack so I could simply listen to silence.  Then pray.  I’d even sing praise songs as loud as I could to the swaying trees and slapping streams.  As the day would gray toward night, the largeness of this creation began to close in and I would rush home, refreshed from the time.

In the Lord’s Providence, I grew up in a camper family that explored natural parks, campgrounds, and many creation wonders.  I have traveled to numerous continents and seen climates from glaciers to rushing waterfalls in tropical rain forests, from the rocks of Petra to the islands of Thailand.  I have eaten food from all over the world – injera bread in Ethiopia, fruit in Thailand, sushi in japan, falafel in Israel, to chocolate in Switzerland.  I once petted a tiger in Asia and dodged lions and bull elephants in the Serengeti.  Yet even in all this I have barely beheld the beauty of God’s creation.

Oddly enough, one of my most powerful encounters with God’s creation happened while I was visiting Louisville, Kentucky after living in Thailand for a number of years.  When I got out of the car for the first time it was at night.  I looked up into the sky and asked my future husband, “do you hear that?”  “Silence!”  No noisy city or light pollution.  I could see the starry sky that I grew up under.  I was in awe and invigorated.  I was quietly enjoying the stars that millions of others have seen since God threw them into the sky.  I was smelling the fresh air that the beautiful trees provided by taking in our carbon dioxide and giving us back the precious oxygen we need.  Every sense God has given us to engage in His creation was being stimulated.  The only response that seemed right was worship.  Not worship in the creation, but worship in the Creator who fashioned this world and Universe with more vibrant colors, tastes, sounds, textures, and aromas that we won’t truly appreciate until heaven.  He could have only made one kind of everything, but instead he created a wheel of sensational beauty.  And all of it is according to His order and wisdom.

Sweet sister, not all of us will be able to experience all the varieties of God’s creation, yet look around you.  Look at the eyes of your loved one, stroke your dear pet’s fur or scales, look up at the moon and stars at night, slow down and savor your food and drink, take a walk at sunset, buy a National Geographic and be marveled at God’s creativity.  Let your kids wake up your sense of wonder at an ant line, butterfly wings, and dirt!  And then…THEN, lift up your hands to thank and Praise God for these precious gifts.  And know that God’s greatest creation, you and me, was so precious to Him that He became like us, took on our form lived the life perfectly, so He could die the death we deserved in order to save His most exquisite creation.  He not only went to great lengths to let His creation experience an effervescent world, He died to save it.

Maltbie D. Babcock penned it best with this great hymn:

This is my Father’s world,
And to my list’ning ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas—
His hand the wonders wrought.

This is my Father’s world:
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,
Declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.

This is my Father’s world:
Oh, let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world,
The battle is not done:
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and Heav’n be one.

Your sister in Christ,

Colleen