This semester, several of my (Corrie) classes have a common question at the heart of the discussion: What does it mean for humans to know God? This question diverges into many others—How do we experience God? To what extent can we know actually know God? By what means is God revealed to us? Etc. Something I keep coming back to in my readings and discussion is the fact that God has chosen to make Himself less hidden through His creation. What sets God apart from other so called gods is the fact that He is Creator. For me, diving more deeply into this Sunday School truth, has brought me to a place of awe I have yet to experience.
The fact that God is Creator communicates to us something vastly important about who He is. He is completely self existent, dependent on nothing or no one but His own being. Unless He creates, from His own self as a source, He is simply a compiler and not a creator. As humans, we are able to reflect His creativity, but we are never able, in the same way He is, to bring about something that finds it’s source solely in us. When we paint or sing or have babies, all of these are beautiful and creative acts, but the source of the material comes from outside ourselves. In reflecting on how fundamentally different God is from myself, I find myself in a place of worship.
Psalms 19:1 says “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork”. Another truth I’ve been reflecting on is that God is not the source of beauty but rather God is beauty. All that is beautiful when we behold creation is a reflection of the One from whence it came. I am brought again to a place of awe when I consider this, because it not only declares the majesty of God but also His goodness. God has made himself less hidden from us through multiple means of revelation—special revelation including the Word of God, the coming of Jesus, personal revelation including the movement of the Spirit within us and general revelation including CREATION.
When we behold creation, we have access to understanding and knowing, in part, the beauty and therefore the very being of the Creator. A beautiful sunrise, the changing of the leaves, and the crash of the waves are not just God saying “Look and see how beautiful” but also “Look and see Me.”
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