HIS CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL

HIS CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL

                Saturday morning in the grey of early dawn, I was at the lake waiting to meet Zach for our Saturday morning walk. I treasure these morning walks and especially the deep conversations we have that most of the world seems unable to comprehend. For us it is an opportunity to converse on a spiritual level that the world has left behind.

                As I was waiting for Zach, I walked out on the dock where a couple of fuzzy goslings were busy nibbling up bird seed. I looked around for their parents and not seeing them I walked up slowly, speaking gently to them and expecting that at any moment they would make a beeline for the water, but they did not. They were busy trying to pry bird seed from between the boards on the dock.

                I stood about ten feet away and watched them for a while and then seeing their frustration at being unable to get at the seed; I took out my knife and moved closer to them to pry some of the seed from between the boards.

                To my surprise the goslings came right up to me and started eating the seeds eagerly as I pried them loose and in fact they seemed to prefer eating the seeds out of my hand. It was one of those rare moments when one suddenly feels submerged in a realm in which most of mankind no longer belongs. We are touched by the innocence… the unwarranted lack of fear.

                In man’s world, everything is tainted… engineered into an unnatural state… forced into straight lines and steel beams. We think to be like God and yet in all of His creation there are no straight lines. In fact if there is a straight line or a right angle anywhere we assume that man has been involved.

                God seems to prefer building His creation upon Fibonacci sequences and golden spirals… in circles and cycles and the unfolding of things in response to His light. In truth, some jaded people would call nature a form of chaos, but it is in this randomness that infinite variety is born and man’s mind comes to peace. We love our straight lines and yet we hate them and seek respite from them in God’s gentler creation.

                In God’s realm seeds go into the ground and surrender to the elements and apparently die and yet it is in this surrendering that new life is germinated and something comes forth, unfolding as it were into something much greater than the seed from which it came. And in this we have lessons to learn, for that which is natural is also spiritual in nature, coming as it does from the mind of God… so that our salvation is also the unfolding of life within the surrendered seed of a human soul.

                In the realm of salvation mankind likes to tie up God’s unveilings in neat little packages… doctrines forced into straight lines… prophecies made to adhere to linear sequences and we don’t always mind chopping off whatever truth doesn’t fit our ruler’s edge in order to package our limited comprehensions into sellable commodities.

                And so Jesus must, from time to time, overthrow our tables and send our coins rolling into the randomness that God prefers, thus bringing forth the unjaded praises of children and humble servants.

                Temples tend to have too many straight lines in them and so God prefers to dwell in hearts that have made room for His seeds to grow… soil made soft by the rain of His presence… brokenness that is now ready for the Master’s touch.

                And so my son Zach and I walk in the cool grey dawn… caught for a moment outside of time… beyond the straight lines of men and machines to ponder the meaning of life… nature bearing silent witness to something eternal… a lost purpose for which we all hunger… something beyond the straight lines of man’s unimaginative conventionality… to the unfolding of a greater plan over which we have no control…. For the earth itself is a seed that is in the process of dying in order to bring forth the sons of God… nor can we scarcely comprehend that it is us that God is calling… away from our straight lines to become the unfolding of His greater purpose… temples of the Spirit housed in human flesh.

                We like to make things scientific… to attach Latin nomenclatures to every genus and species in order to sound like we actually understand. But God is not impressed… and we don’t understand nearly as much as we think we do, simply because we refuse to include the unseen… the spiritual framework upon which the whole of creation is built.

                When my dad was dying some years back, we surrounded him with our prayers and our songs of worship. The nurse had told us that his body had now entered into the active process of dying. As his spirit prepared to leave his body, it began to let loose of its life giving processes. The Bible tells us that the body without the spirit is dead and this is true. The nurse had told us what to watch for. Active dying shows up as a lack of circulation in the extremities as fingers and toes and lips change from pink to blue and the skin becomes blotchy because the veins are no longer holding their life giving blood.

                Death is a process of the spirit releasing its stewardship of our body to return to God who gave it. We are fearfully and wonderfully made and the larger part of that wonder is that the spirit of God sustains all living things, so that upon its departure the organization and life of it returns to the elements from which we came. Do we ever stop to think that all things are held together by Him… that in Him we quite literally live and move and have our being and that in the process of His leaving we actually return to the elements from which we are made? Life without the spirit is dead… all life without the spirit is dead.

                If only we would pay closer attention to the unseen part of our being, we would find in it the unfolding of a greater purpose. After all, we are created for the purpose of living and reigning with Him forever. This world in its present state is not our final destination, but a training ground… a ground in which we learn how to bring the natural self into unity with the spiritual so that the greater life can unfold within us.

                Paul explained it like this: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, “The first Adam became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” 1 Cor. 15:42-45

                Peter tells us in 1 Peter 1:23, that when we are born again we are born not of seed which is perishable but imperishable.”  Should we not then learn how to live by that life that has been planted in us? Should we not realize that our eternal destiny is planted in us by the life-giving spirit of Christ?

                Indeed Paul tells us saying: “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God.” Romans 8:14.

                And Jesus let Nicodemus in on a little secret that would blow our minds if we could really comprehend it. He said: “The wind blows where it wishes and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit.” John 3:8

                Could it be that when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, He takes us away from our straight lines and guides us into the random flow of nature as it is untainted by mankind? Instead of forcing us into square molds, God chooses to prune us like a tree… not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

                Christianity is not a cookie cutter religion of conformity, but of the randomness of the Spirit and in that randomness is found the infinite variety that brings peace to man’s troubled heart.

                It is good to let nature speak to us… for beyond what the eye can see lays the greater reality of the Spirit of God that upholds all things by the word of his power.

                We are His creatures great and small. We have been born into the finite realm of nature and further limited by our own conventionality; but

God has planted in us the seeds of eternity and if we will learn to live by them we will enter into the greater purpose. For God has not predestined us to be conformed to each other, as mankind is often want to do, but He has predestined us to be conformed to His infinite Son and that means infinite variety.