Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 0-210 Sunday 22 Oct 2000

Reading: PSALM 33 – WITH UTMOST ART

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

In a world ‘full of his unfailing love’ we bow in awe at his footstool.

‘Sing to him a new song … skilfully’ (v3). The inspiration for your song is lying all around you in the mysterious wonders of God’s way with this world. A hauntingly beautiful world, strange, enigmatic, provocative, even terrifying.

Metaphor describes it better than formula (vv 6,7). It attests to a Maker who is the gloriously inventive artist of light, but also a dangerous enemy to those who oppose ‘the purposes of his heart’ (v 11) for the nations (vv 10-19).

Creation is *spoken* into existence (see Gen 1:3), continuously upheld in being and form, and moved towards the transfiguration of all the things (Rev 21:1-5) by the One we adore as the Word and the Wisdom of God, Christ (Col 1:15-20). Spoken from his mind, creation is imprinted with characteristics of his thinking which we experience as the world’s life, its rhyme and reason, its beautiful laws, designed to allow life to run joyously.

Not only does the wise Creator create wisely, he pours out wisdom on to Creation as an attribute (Prov 3:19). Hence the uncanny sense we have of the world as turning towards us and calling (Job 28).

Creation is not God, neither is it the glory of God, but it is the gate through which he can come to us. Thus we have the sense that created things have a symbolic and sacramental quality.

First, they invite us to look *at* them, then to look *through* them as through glass to the epiphany of God at their fiery centre. ‘Creation is a hand reaching straight into experience and arranging it with new meaning’ (Prof Jacob Bronowski). The classic instance is given in God’s astonishing answer to Job (Job 38).

Now do you have a new song?

Consider the possibility that perhaps you go through life head down, eyes closed, mind shuttered against God’s self-revelation through creation. Wake up and sing a ‘new song’.

– Dennis Lennon

Copyright Scripture Union, 2000

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