Whomever is hitting their foot with a hammer unnecessarily should be told to stop. It’s a trustworthy saying.
Since Jesus is the Firstborn, the Opener of the Way, all things that come into existence take on something of His “shape”, so to a certain extent God is found in both a slug and an elephant.
But the question is whether it is easier for us to find Him in the slug! or, as I once contemplated while at a swimming hole, in an autumn leaf falling from a tree (as opposed to the “mountains’ grandeur” in the background).
I figured out a way that Jesus’ nature is expressed in that falling leaf, but I’ve never figured out how it is expressed in a slug. But I’m not going to worry about it; I’ll let the Holy Spirit show me such things when He chooses, I won’t try to force it.
And eventually I’ll see it in all things, because as the Apostle tells us, we shall see Him as He is – and will logically then see Him as He is reflected in all things.
Seriously, that’s the lesson you see?
The heavens show us elegance, symmetry, balance, progression, and a lot more, not just “big”.
The nature of Jesus can be found in everything, just not directly, there’s a “filter”. That filter is called “Incarnation”:
"and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds: God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by Whom all things were made;
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man,
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried;
and the third day He rose again in accordance with the scriptures, and ascended into heaven,
and sits at the right hand of the Father,
and He shall come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
Whose kingdom shall have no end".
Somewhere in there both the elephant and the slug have a place – and if you see such a place, awesome! while if you don’t, skip the creature and look at the Savior.
Just keep in mind the filter (see above).
They also give us more insight into the import of Psalm 8:4, not only because of the vastness of the size of the universe, but also because of the vastness of its antiquity.
What is man, that you are mindful of him?[!]
It’s not lightly that He gets called “the Ancient of Days”.
6-10 ka worth of days? Bah.
I am currently sitting here trying to calm down and tell myself that God is at work in Chinese outfits buying up U.S. companies and shafting the quality – I just had a Pyrex container blow up on the stove, something that never happened when I was a kid (even when we tried!).
@MelekRimaye
I don’t understand your thinking here. God’s grace is not the same thing as his person, his self. Likewise, God himself is not found in the things he makes. Creation may be interpreted as bearing his hallmark, but that does not make God a part of the creation itself.
I am not aware of any biblical texts that would lead to the conclusion that God is found in everything. We have many, many examples, though, of God’s responsibility for their existance, like a craftsman. And a craftsman is not a part of the products of their hands.
If, indeed, you think that God can be found in everything, then I understand your worry about prefering one “manifestation” (for lack of a better word) of God over another. But I think you are making a category error.
I do know of a benefit to that specific problem–people can no long use Pyrex products for making methamphetamine, they have to steal or buy laboratory glassware instead.
To be clear, I don’t literally mean some sort of pantheism or panentheism. I refer to God’s creative work being found equally in all things.
In addition, Creation itself is a source of wisdom:
Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. (Proverbs 6:6-8, NIV2011)
Look at the birds of the air… Consider the lilies of the field… (Matthew 6:26, 28, ESV)
I actually got hit with some wisdom a couple of summers ago when I was burdened and stressed over needing to get some projects completed: I headed to a swimming hole where I was supposed to meet some friends, and I arrived first. When I’d dropped my backpack and cooler in the shade on a sand bar, I looked over the stretch of river and saw rapids, the deep hole with a rope swing, the calm shallow water over a submerged gravel bar, the massive drop-off of the upstream gravel/rock bar bordering the swimming hole, and then the lobe of the hole on the far side. The lobe that year was shaped by the upstream gravel/rock bar so it was filled with a slow whirlpool about ten yards across, and around the edge of the whirlpool hundreds of colorful leaves floated in a great circle. That slow rotation was quite peaceful, but what hit me was that it wasn’t even close to autumn; those colorful leaves had been shed by their trees in response to a heat wave, a response to the stress of temperatures changing fifty degrees between low and high for several days. Seeing those leaves’ response to stress, falling onto the river surface and floating in a mellow circle carried by the current, it struck me as an admonition to me to let go of the stress and just relax. So when friends arrived they found me floating in that slow whirlpool on an inner tube, just awake enough to not let my drink fall into the river.
A buddy said that same thing last night – he goes to thrift stores trying to find old Pyrex and says it’s a real challenge because all the meth freaks are doing the same.
The irony there being that for most of my lifetime the best laboratory glassware was made by Pyrex.
Just BTW, one article I read yesterday said that foreign-made Pyrex isn’t even as heat resistant as good auto windshield glass – not only aren’t they making borosilicate any longer, they’ve even quit making aluminasilicate!
A distinction: God is never apart from the least part of His Creation, but He is never a part of it.
Careful with describing God by human limitations! While this one may be true, it is also true that where a human craftsman is no longer connected to a product he has made, God always remains connected because He not only created it but continually upholds it – as one professor of mine noted, creation is always present tense.
I’d say this comes down – as is so common in theology – to the meaning of the preposition, in this case the little word “in”. There are two ways we use that word that seem relevant here: we can say “I saw apples in the window”, where “in” designates the frame or border inside of which we see an object; we can also say “I saw apples in the pie”, where “in” indicates something that the object is part of.
In terms of the first of these uses of “in”, God is indeed in everything as the apples are in the window, with the significant difference that there is no view from which God is absent; in terms of the second use, to say “God is in everything” muddles a definitive distinction. Thus when we look at any bit of Creation, God is in that picture (and indeed shapes it), but God is not part of the item nor indeed of any bit of Creation.
For me what I do is see stories and attributes of God in nature. It’s more like the love and beauty I see in nature, I find symbolism and metaphors for god. But that these stories can also be used as fairy tales and parables for other things. So while I don’t literally find god in nature I do so symbolically.
I guess for me this is the thing that helps the most with this.
When I learned that the word for breath is the same word for spirit and wind , when I read genesis 1 this is the image I get in my mind.
A world covered in dark deep waters with a dark cloudy sky above. Just shades of gray and black sort of. Cold. Then this warm glow begins to develop. Like the sun but as a cosmic being. This being is hovering above it all and then speaks and when they speak it’s like a rushing wind and that wind blows and separates the waters. Those words, filled with life, cause trees and life to explode. Their breath comes out like a wind and fills the lungs of all these animals and people and brings them to life. His breath, which is his spirit fills us up and his breath which is the wind blows through the trees making the leaves shake, blows over the water making waves crash and even blows into the heavens and knocks all the clouds away to let heat and warmth come down. So it’s all just symbolism. But when I’m under a big leaf magnolia in later spring with a cloud moving overhead and wind whistling through the forest, I’m imagining El breathing out his spirit across it all.
I think, at the end of the day, what I’m trying to do is strike a balance between the need to thank God for everything, and the fact that I know I’ll see God more in elephants than in, say rocks.
It’s about finding a balance between the two, since both will be good for my spiritual journey.
As a genuine encouragement, I don’t see anything wrong with a prayer that runs:
Almighty God, thank you for all that you’ve made - especially elephants. Help me to see you as clearly in all things as I see you in elephants. Amen.
Strikes me, that’s a prayer that our Heavenly Father will not only consider precious but also delight to grant.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.
