very fortunately for me and for you, this father sees the son coming. He's been waiting, looking, longing every day forever. He runs. Before the boy hardly gets a word out, the father scoops up that boy and twirls him around, hugs him, kisses him, weeps on his shoulder, and says, "I have missed you so much. I love you so much. Welcome home. Let the party begin" (Luke 15:11-32, AP). This is the truth of our lives. This is our hope. This is the God who is so almighty he bends down to us and whispers in our ear, "Please, call me 'Abba.'" We believe in God the Father Almighty.
Notes
1. From "Strength to Love," in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James Washington (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), 508.
2. Nicholas Lash, Believing Three Ways in One God: A Reading of the Apostles' Creed (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 21.
3. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 223.
4. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, trans. M. L. del Mastro (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1977), 59.
5. Karl Barth, The Christian Life, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 79.
6. N. T. Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 19f.
7. Henri Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 12, 96-99.
8. Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (New York: Pocket, 1976), 113.
9. Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1982), 39-41.
C h a p t e r T h r e e
MAKER OF HEAVEN
AND EARTH
________________________________________________________
LESSON 8
MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
(PART 1)
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
(Genesis 1:1)
Gregory of Nyssa called the universe "a marvelously composed hymn to the power of the Almighty."1 Saint Thomas Aquinas wrote, "In God's hand were the ends of the world: when his hand was opened by the key of love, creatures came forth."2 Dante spoke of "the love that moves the stars."3 The almighty God who is all love expressed that love by creating the universe, the earth, me sitting here writing, you sitting there reading, and this is our good fortune.
How God did it is best understood by the scientists. The Church has had an embarrassing relationship with science. Galileo is only the most famous of so many scientists we revere who were upbraided by Church authorities. Southern religious leaders cheered when a Tennessee court ruled to censure a teacher of evolution named Scopes. Too often, theology has fled science, fearing that science would pull the curtain back on God, as Toto did to the Wizard in Oz. Charles Darwin, having considered becoming a clergyman, boarded the HMS Beagle with a copy of Paradise Lost, and it was his faith that was lost: "I am like a man who has become colour-blind; disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate."4
But science, instead of shredding our faith, might actually expand our faith. When the physicist tells me the pinhole of light I see in the sky has been streaming toward me for thousands of years, when the biologist explains to me the echolocation of the bat or the visual prowess of the eagle, I finally understand that the God I've wanted to tuck in my back pocket is too small. The true God is bigger, older, more powerful, more marvelous than my mind can ever comprehend. Theodore Jennings wisely described our passion for science:
Both science and faith stand in service to humanity, to liberate humanity and the earth itself from bondage to powers of destruction. . . . When faith seeks to hold the mind and heart captive to a particular world view, science rightly chastens faith by fulfilling its own commission to liberate from illusion and fear. Yet science, too, is capable of forgetting or misunderstanding this commission. When science becomes mere technology in the quest for power it becomes an instrument of destruction.5
Must we believe the world was created literally in merely six days (as in Genesis 1)? Of course not. Galileo wrote to his friend Castelli: "I believe the intention of the Holy Bible is to persuade us toward salvation, something science could never do; only the Holy Spirit can move us. But I do not think we must believe that the same God who gave us our intellect would have us put it aside and not use it."6 God gave us brains, and God must be more delighted than anybody when we leap forward to greater knowledge of God's world.
Genesis 1 is not a physics lesson, and it was written before science had awakened in the mind of humanity. Genesis 1 is a bold proclamation of Who is the author of the universe, the force that makes it all happen, nurturing the astonishing explosion of life on this planet and the artistry of light in the farthest reaches of space. The world is not here by chance. The universe has a purpose.
LESSON 9
MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
(PART 2)
When I look at your heavens, what is man that you are mindful of
him? Yet you crown him with glory and honor; you have given him
dominion over the works of your hands. (Psalm 8:3-6, AP)
To contemplate God as "Maker of heaven and earth" draws me out of myself and elicits a song, a sigh, a shout of praise. "Praise the Lord!" is the Bible's ringing invitation to us to be dumbfounded before the greatness of God. I think of God: my eyes fly open; I stop and notice the works of God all around me and inside me.
Praise is cheap nowadays; ads praise everything from soap to automobiles, mindless celebrities and the latest "American idol." But the only object ultimately worthy of our adoration is God. Instead of calculating how I might use God to get what I'm after, I simply praise God. Praise is amazed by God, thunderstruck by the power and tenderness at the heart of everything. Praise is not efficient, not productive of anything except a relationship with the Maker of the universe. Charles Wesley sang of being "lost in wonder, love and praise." His brother John, with his last dying breath, sang: "I'll praise my Maker while I have breath; and when my soul is lost in death, praise shall employ my nobler powers. My days of praise shall never be past."7
Praise is the cure for despair, as we dare not wind up like one of Pat Conroy's characters, whose "greatest fear was that he would be buried alive in that American topsoil of despair and senselessness where one felt nothing, where being alive was simply a provable fact instead of a ticket to a magic show."8 God's fantastically creative hand has strewn wonders all around this theater in which we find ourselves—and the least we can do is notice. Before God's magic we are reduced to slack-jawed wonder. We stop and smell the rose because the color and scent give glory to God. We shut off the lights and stare at the night sky. Christians pay attention; they notice, marvel, and give thanks.
If God is the Maker
