Tag: Creation

upheld

L’abri Conference
Rochester, Minnesota
February 10-11

Today I’m surrounded by eager minds and running pens.

“Christ brought the universe into existence with His speech and only by His speech does it continue to be upheld.”

It was some version of this sentence that settled deep – especially that one word: upheld.

There is not one movement, material, musical note, or molecular formation that exists in this day without being upheld by Christ through His speech. His words – most powerful words – hold all things together. All things.

We fret over governments and institutions and the unraveling of societies, but we forget the One who is sovereign over all things, Whose word alone holds all things together.

Calvin writes, in his Institutes,

“While it becomes man seriously to employ his eyes in considering the works of God, since a place has been assigned him in this most glorious theater that he may be a spectator of them, his special duty is to give ear to the Word, that he may the better profit.”

I can only imagine the kind of “becoming” Calvin meant – perhaps that our taking an active role in marveling at the glory of Creation would send us on the most beautiful earthly course toward heaven. But it is this second phrase which captures me now, “…his special duty is to give ear to the Word, that he may the better profit.”

“In the beginning was the Word,” we read in John, “and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

Let us respond to our special duty and so better profit – give ear to the Word, Christ Himself. By Him our very existence is upheld.

When Christ was tempted in the desert, how did He respond?
“It is written…”
Wasn’t he, in fact, saying, “I Am He.”

The very words that held the desert together as a backdrop for this dramatic scene were breathed out of Christ Himself – the Living Word. In Him all things hold together (Colossians 1:17). Miraculous.

And can it be that in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28)? Inside the Word, we live and move and have our being?

This is what it means to be human: to be in the Word, marveling at a universe hanging on the very words of its Creator.

let LOVE fly like cRaZy

Posted on by Caroline 0

pink grass – an illustration

A couple weeks ago, I wrote the post, “what if the grass was pink?” and thought it made all sorts of sense (of course, all my ideas do… in my head). Judging from my sister’s blank stare and a stranger’s lengthy comments about how I wanted to dismantle the entire psychiatric system (among other things), I decided I had maybe missed my mark. This is my attempt to give an illustration that will hopefully make it more understandable and less like I want someone on acid to take over the world.

This is an exercise in imagination, so put on your best thinking hat. Ready?

A collection of cans of paint and other relate...

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Imagine a palette of paints with every color possible (I know, it’s a pretty big paint palette). Now, imagine your world in monochrome. Imagine everything you see and touch today as some shade of black/white/gray. Imagine the computer screen and your clothes and your make up and the flowers on the table and the sun outside… imagine everything you see is like the world of “I Love Lucy.”

Things are pretty dull in the colorless world, yes?

Okay. Now go back to that palette of paints with every possible color (even colors we can’t think up). Imagine someone choosing, color by color, how to bring your world to life. With an infinite palette of options, the possibilities are endless.

Roses could be… turquoise. Tree trunks might be… sapphire. Sunlight will be… purple.

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It’s not hard to imagine ourselves as artists painting a canvas where up is down and the sunshine glows blue. I suppose today they call it abstract.

So, why is it so hard to imagine the infinite number of options God had when He created everything in the beginning? We’ve since found thousands of reasons to explain WHY the sun shines golden and the grass grows green, but couldn’t it have turned out differently?

God could have chosen any color to paint the sky.
He chose blue.
Now there is a whole new beauty wrapped up in the mystery of a blue sky.
God could have chosen any of an infinite amount of colors.
He chose blue.

Yes, we can explain why it is blue scientifically, but it didn’t have to be blue. God didn’t consult science textbooks as he spoke things into existence, to see whether certain color combinations were possible or if the law of gravity would really be universal.

Science just attempts to explain how God ordered everything by divine choice.

If the sky was green we would find scientific support that would lead us to believe it couldn’t be any other way.

And that is how we cheat ourselves out of the magic of Creation. I mean magic in a good and not creepy sense.
I mean… the look you got in your eyes when you first saw fireworks because you didn’t think such beautiful explosions possible.
I mean… the building emotion you feel when you watch a stunning sunset or witness a double rainbow or wake up to see mysterious fog lifting from a lake.

There is a healthy sense of awe I hope I always feel when I stop to think about how (out of an infinite palette of options) God chose the luscious color green for grass. Because, you see, it could be pink.

Posted on by Caroline 6