The last few days have been a special time for me. Because of my job I am living away from my family but they have been with me these last few days for Spring break. I also managed to visit my mum and dad with them which involved a visit to Scotland. There, the cold, fresh air seems cleaner and around most corners of Glasgow are images and pictures of the beauty held in the hinterland of Scotland’s Victorian cities. My mother and father now live in a retirement community on the outskirts of Glasgow at the edge of the Campsie hills and looking out their window one can see the homes built 50 years ago after the 2nd world war and the churches that have served this community since before the American revolution. Somehow time stands still in its progress and in the ups and downs of life we, that is, humanity, seek to build and construct beautiful things that will be there when we are gone.
We do this I think because we reflect the creative power of God to bring order and beauty out of chaos. So, in Genesis chapter one, the story of creation begins with a bang “let there be light”, but then proceeds from this cahotic word to a series of pronouncements that begin to shape and order and make beautiful what God has called into being.
6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. 16 God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
These first four days have produced no living thing but instead have set a world in motion that comes from the hand of God. It is a sobering thing, given the state of many corners of our planet, that the very ground we walk on was God’s creation. While this makes it perfect for sure we would be mistaken to think that this pristine condition is the end of the story. Of course living things will come and populate the earth and by doing so change and shape it for their own use and benefit. This is to be expected and as such we can be sure this features in God’s plan and purpose for the world. My preference therefore is not to emphasize the early perfection but to understand the earth at this point as the blank canvas on which God and man will write their story.
So, as I look out my window here in London I can see the London Eye, and I think God smiles. This enormous Ferris wheel takes tourists on a journey above London and is a tribute to modern engineering. It creates something new and bold while being set in the midst of the gothic houses of parliament (built between 1840 and 1870) and county hall (slowly completed in 1958 after 47 years which included two world wars and a stock market crash). The great Ferris wheel signifies that we are not done creating, not done shaping and molding our environment, and not done stepping in the footsteps of God as we do so. These beginning words of Genesis are full of hope and wonder, full of life and full of a world made new. Before we think about the sin of man and how this great creation becomes scarred and broken reflect a few minutes on its beauty at birth.
God grant us the wisdom to overcome as much as we can our sinfulness and use this creation for the furtherance of your glory. Amen.
April 4th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I love reading your blogs, Doug. I was wondering if I could expand on your sentence, “My preference therefore is not to emphasize the early perfection but to understand the earth at this point as the blank canvas on which God and man will write their story” or if you’d allow me to “emphasize the early perfection”? One of the things that impacts me when I read the Bible, especially the creation story and Revelation, is the literary structure the Bible follows. Stories that come from that culture are often difficult for Westerners because we like our stories to be linear–they need to have a beginning, middle, and end. Stories from that part of the world are often told in a circular fashion meaning they have a beginning, middle, end, and then they go back to the beginning. So the story of creation is what we are heading back to in the big story the Bible tells. I’m reminded of something Martin Luther King, Jr. (can you believe he was killed 40 years ago today?). He said this support in support of non-violence, but I’m going to make it apply to what I’m writing about! He said something like, “We cannot use violence because the end cannot justify the means, because the end is preexistent in the means.” God made the world to be perfect, beautiful, and life giving. When the story comes back to the beginning and we are restored to Christ, the world will be “good” as God intended it. In the meantime the way God wanted it is preexistent in the here and now because Jesus has defeated sin and death on the cross. We live in the tension of the “already but not yet” of God’s kingdom. Jesus is Lord of all, and that is the reality, but the other reality is that sin is still present, so we can’t experience His kingdom fully yet. I love all the paradoxes!! Our job is to allow God to continue His redemptive work through us. In our hearts, in our marriages, in our families, neighborhoods, work places, cities, countries, world, we are called to let His kingdom come and his will be done here and now, remembering how He intended it and what He will restore it back to.
April 5th, 2008 at 3:49 am
I talked about the creation as a blank canvas because it is the setting and stage of the drama of redemption. On reflection that is probably under emphasising the position of the created earth in the purpose of God. My point somewhat in the bible study was to also to illustrate the unity of creation earth, beast, and man in a grand picture of perfect relationships. Calling creation a blank canvas probably undermines that idea.
On the “already but not yet” I err on the side of already and my view is that the modern church has erred too much on the not yet. The creation that we have and are a part of now is a wonderful beatiful complex mystery that we walk around in every day. I want us to have that sense again of the sheer bessedness of the earh. It points us in the right direction - which is to our creator.