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