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 million 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
