GOD, OUR LOVING CRE ATOR

       We have long believed in God, our loving creator. We have mused on the meaning for us in this present world and imagined what it may mean for our life beyond this world in Heaven. But how many if anybody has actually pushed this conviction to its logical dimension? This is of course impossible as we say we believe in an infinite God and we know that we are only finite beings in every way except that we  will live eternally and are given some degree of creativity and love whose limits we do not know. So here in this essay we want to push out our understanding of what it may mean to have a God that is both infinitely loving and infinitely creative.  It is an act of worship to reflect on this subject. It will be finite, limited to what we can perceive by the Spirit of God living within the creativity that God has imparted to us.

       Basically I find it hard to believe that this God would have made only one earth with people on it. What was He doing before He dreamed up this intricate world? Its creation was a 7 day job according to Scripture, although its preparation may have been untold millennium longer. From our perspective, Earth is the only planet likely to have beings on near to our kind as we require a medium temperature for existence. But there may be many solar systems beyond this one which may as well have beings near our kind on at least one “earth” or perhaps many earths. There may also be many kinds of beings not limited to our temperature span, so that any planet may have different structures of beings. After all, God is not of our physical kind but of Spirit, who is not limited to our limitations of time and space and physical matter. We accept angels to be of another dimension. As logically, there may be any number of planets or stars inhabiting created being between what we call physical and Spiritual. There may be other dimensions of beings with whom a loving God can communicate.

       It is God’s nature to love his creation just as we love our creations. Children are our creation, formed by the gift of creativity God has implanted in his creation of us. We would give our lives for our children just as God would and did in Christ. But being finite, we can love only so many children intensely. God can love any number of people in his infinite love. I suppose if we could love many more children and provide for them we might have wanted many more. God has no such limitation. He can have a billion as easily as a few. And care about all of them and keep tract of them. How finite we are relative to Him! It only makes sense that he would want what we would call an infinite number of children for his infinite love to be spread throughout his universe. It makes little sense that we would claim that we are his total concern here on planet earth which resolves around only a medium sized star. While we perceive what we believe is his infinite love for us, how obvious it is that he has “other sheep not of this fold”!

      Some years ago I was on our orange farm on a Sunday morning watching over our half-reaped fruit. It was a time of worship out there in nature, reflecting on the kindness of God in giving us this ten acre farm of oranges. At one time that morning I was walking across the farm, through the grass observing trees still to be picked as well as other kinds of fruit trees I had planted. Suddenly I was filled with exuberance and gushed out, “God, are you enjoying this as much as I am?!  I went home and drew a map of every tree and entitled it, “The Garden of God”. Here he gave us this farm to enjoy as we can in our limited way. But he had millions of acres of farms, valleys, mountains, woods, lakes, rivers, and oceans even here on this little planet. Certainly he made it for us to enjoy, but nobody has even seen more than a minute fraction of all he has made. I was so impressed once about the beauty of wild flowers that I began to video them enlarged to see their intricate beauty.

       For whom was this beauty created? Certainly not for humans only. For his own joy he made them as well as to share the beauty with us. We could as well focus on any aspect of his creation and be just as amazed, from the building block of matter, the tiny atom with dozens of components man has already identified and observed in the varieties in the elements recognize by science; likely we are still on the frontier of our understanding of matter; to the mystery of an endless universe, endless to our limits of scientific perception, which expands with every new way of perceiving matter, from telescopes to light detection or what ever they used to “see” into space.

       Why did God make it so big and intricate that it is mind-boggling if we try to understand much of it? With reverence I would suggest it was for his amusement and joy of creating what he could; much more as we also try to create something new with that drive to push out and try our ability to create, an instinct we definitely have from him. Art, inventions, architecture, infrastructures, and literature are examples of this divine drive to create what we can because we can. So God loves His world- the universe, and pays attention to the smallest building blocks of matter even as an artist focuses on the smallest element of his work, in order to create the big picture of his vision. The universe is this picture of his creative imagination that he created for himself to express himself.

        It is not enough that God made an infinite universe. He created life in order to relate to his creation somewhat on his level. A pagan writer noted that “we also are of his offspring”. We are made in his image, an idea we accept by faith but can’t fully describe in all the dimensions of that hereditary factor as we do not know our Parent even as we do not fully understand ourselves. What we can be sure of is that it is a dimension of his love that he wants someone to relate to, so he made children like himself to have that contact with. If there is any downside to God’s love, it is that it makes him lonely when he is alone, or has too few children for his expansive love. How he yearns to have more children to love, who will know and recognize him and love him back! How he yearns to expand the number of recipients of that love!

       Throughout the eons of our time measurements he most likely has created countless worlds of creatures, plants, matter, and people to relate to. How many worlds have opted to freely love him when given a choice as we have been, and how many made the foolish choice of our first ancestors who imagined God may not have told them the whole truth? In his infinite love, he desired to give his created children the choice to love, trust, and listen to him. How beautiful it is of that love that he also finally seals that choice for those who recognize him, giving them respite and eternal joy in Heaven! Apparently he can’t stand to let the Deceiver plague us beyond this limited earthly life. He wants to gather his loved ones to himself to be safely with him, as we say, forever. That may just be the next step of his eternally creative love. Meanwhile, he has a wonderful “time” creating new worlds and new peoples in his ongoing quest to pursue and enlarge the fellowship of those who know him. He welcomes those who know his heart to participate in bringing multitudes into his fellowship of infinite love.                                                                                                                                                  Sept. 21, 2009