The Glory of God

#195: In His Creation

01 Sept 2006
We sat on the beach. On a warm blanket laid on wet sand.
Over cold pizza, but under the vast sky. With half a moon looking down on the half bottle of orange soda. It was as if you could see forever and now at the same time. Overlapping with the lapping of the waves. Overwhelming in its simplicity.

"Oh Lord, our Lord,
How excellent Your Name is
How excellent Your Name in all the earth
Your glory fills the heavens
Beyond the farthest star
How excellent Your Name in all the earth.

When I look into the heavens
The moon and all the stars
I wonder what You even saw in me
But You took me and You loved me
And You've given me a crown
And now I praise your name eternally."

02 Sept 2006
We went to a cliff overlooking the open sea on one end and the lights of the harbor on the other. Up and down pathways as shrubs extended their arms. As rocks called out and winds whistled. Embraced by a green shawl as we were embraced by beauty.

"Shout to the Lord, all the earth, let us sing
Power and majesty, praise to the King
Mountains bow down and the seas will roar
At the sound of Your name

I sing for joy at the works of Your Hands
Forever I'll love You
Forever I'll stand
Nothing compares to the promise I have in You."

05 Sept 2006
Borrowed from a footnote in John Piper's book, "The Pleasures of God"
Clyde Kilby's 11 Resolutions:

1.) At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

2.) Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death, when he said: “There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendour, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.”

3.) I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence but, just as likely, ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

4.) I shall not turn my life into a thin straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

5.) I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

6.) I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are, but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic” existence.

7.) I shall follow Darwin’s advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.

8.) I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, “fulfill the moment as the moment.” I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.

9.) If for nothing more than the sake of a change of view, I shall assume myancestry to be from the heavens rather than from the caves.

10.) Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this veryday, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the Architect who calls Himself Alpha and Omega.

11.) I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the “child of thepure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.”