Creation groans and is in agony
we, called to free her, are her doom.
God created and all was good
but God gave her to us to mind.
Now she labors nearly in vain,
yet not without a bit of hope.
Ignorant of who we really are
God’s children walk asleep.
Creation waits with patient hope
for God’s children to awake.
All Creation waits and yearns and longs
to hear —
the sleepers have awakened!
If you read my book, you will recognize that I started each chapter with a poem. These poems were influenced by my favorite scriptures. This first chapter ended up being focused on keeping a Sabbath day, but this first poem was about my main premise that creation is still waiting for humanity to wake up to its responsibility as God’s children. I wrote the following:
“The book of Genesis, the first chapter, tells us God created everything out of chaos – a dark and formless wasteland. In this image of Creation, we have a God who brings order out of chaos in the beginning, now and forever. Creation is not a one-time event that happened and is complete. Creation is ongoing. It is not that God was Creator; God is Creator. While the story of Creation in the first chapter seems to indicate God “rested” after finishing the work, Creation is by no means “finished,” and this “rest” is actually a hint of some long distant future expectation that may always be the something that draws us on. All we have to do is look at life around us and, aided by things like the Hubble telescope, spaceships that travel to Jupiter and beyond, or electron microscopes that peer into the tiniest spec of Creation, we see the work of Creation unfolding. We see both chaos and order. Both the chaos and the ordering are of God. Chaos continues to disrupt things, and just as dependably, everything comes into new order, and so it goes. This is the pattern; Creation continues today. The “Seventh Day” is that which draws us into the future. On that final great day of our God, all of Creation will rest in harmony and shalom peace. In actual fact, that great and final day of our God does not actually have to arrive for the pulling effect to work. Creation continues as long as God is Creator. ” (Let’s add the James Webb telescope to the list above.)
I see that I am still of the mind that creation is an ongoing process and we have a God who is always Creator. My mind is constantly astonished as science reaches further and further into our universe, showing us that there are 100 billion to 2 trillion galaxies in just that portion of the universe that can be observed. Our planet earth is but a tiny speck in this vast universe and science speculates that there are many more galaxies than what we can observe. They tell us they can only observe 3% of the universe. Stop and think about that for a moment with the awe it deserves.
What I understand is that God somehow makes room for creation. The omnipresent God, who exists beyond time and space, beyond all that we can observe, is divine presence holding all of creation, personally present to each bit of creation, and continuing to create. We must let go of our primitive ideas of a God on a throne somewhere up in a place called heaven. And what we have learned through the coming of Christ to earth is that God is love. But love is something more than a feeling. It is as I understand it a kind of energy.
1 John 4:16 God is love, and all who live in love live in God and God lives in them.
God is not a being; God is being itself. God is not an object separate from creation. We cannot distance ourselves from God. We can ignore God, we can deny God, we can refuse to believe God exists, but we can never escape God. That’s just how it is. We and all of creation are in God and God is in us, and that’s just how it is.
Now, we humans have long seen ourselves as the whole point of creation, as if we are God’s favored ones and the very reason for creation. I tend to think that is rather silly in light of what we know about creation these days. However, I do think that we get to focus on our planet and our role, our responsibility, and our place on planet earth. Now I am asking the question, what good are we anyway? Of what use is humanity on this planet? And I admit that some days I tend to think of us as a failed species and that the earth would do better without us. What do you think?
My next post will begin to look at my question and what I am thinking today, and I will also move toward exploring the idea of a Sabbath Day. I hope you come with me and please feel free to add your thoughts. I would love to have a conversation with you.
Bishop Kedda
Bishop Kedda 