Friday, June 26, 2009

Quote of the Week

There is a kind of creation that only God can do.  For God to bring something into being required nothing other than his eternal, loving reality as a starting point.   We, on the other hand, always start in the middle of things, working with raw materials given to us by God and by the generations before us.

4 comments:

Craver Vii said...

I love creating things, but that's a misnomer, isn't it? After all, we're not really creating, we're re-creating... we're re-arranging other things that have already been created.

I like the story about a scientist that tells God, "Ha! I too, have figured out how to create a living being. See, first you take some dirt..." God interrupts and says, "Wait a sec; get your own dirt."

Every Square Inch said...

When we create stuff, we need to start with stuff. Your story made me laugh - "get your own dirt" indeed

Ted M. Gossard said...

Yes. And creativity is surely a part of our being made in God's image. Of course God did it "ex nihilo". But God takes human creativity as part of his new creation in Jesus, I take it, in the works humans do in fulfilling God's creation mandate. So that while all is a gift from God, what we humans do with that gift, in God's sovereignty and will, somehow does make a difference, having both God's fingerprints, and our own on it.

And I think somehow in the new creation, we as Christ's Body have our special parts now, that will somehow go through eternity.

Every Square Inch said...

I think it speaks of God's love and kindness to us that He allows us to participate in the creative process... albeit as a 2nd order creation whereby we create from what God has first created "ex-nihilo". Yet no other creature in all of creation has that privilege or ability