As It Was in the Beginning

As it was in the Beginning, is now, and Ever Shall be;

World without End – Amen

Written by Dan McDonald

Dependent upon the insights of too many to count

 

Planetary nebula photographed by Hubble

From an article in Christianity Today

            What will happen to our present creation?  I know of many Christians who view this world as something temporary, something that will simply be burned up by a great fire and then replaced by a permanent new creation.  I viewed creation that way much of my Christian life.  Sometimes in our church services we would sing a chorus that has made its way from the ancient times of the early church.  I had a hard time singing the words, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be; world without end.  Amen.”  Do we live in a world without end?  I wasn't sure about this song.  I won't pretend there aren't mysteries about the future that I have no way of understanding.  But I have begun to believe that the ancients who sang the words of the ancient chorus had a sense of what God plans for our creation.

Chicago nestled against Lake Michigan

The city of man connected to creation 

            It is true sometimes that we Christians understand that we cannot get final satisfaction from our relationship to our present creation.  I will interact with a beautiful and wonderful blog by Christie Purifoy who was able to express her thanks that God granted her to have many of the varied desires she pursued in life.  She wanted to live in a big city and was able to.  She wanted to earn a PhD and managed to do so.  She wanted to teach at a university and did so.  She wanted then to leave that to take up living on a farm, raising children with her husband and writing.  She was able to do that.  But the desires she wanted in this life, even as full and wonderful as they were taught her that in bringing her to pursue and enjoy her desires, that there was yet another home in a future creation that was calling her.  She understood that ultimate satisfaction could not be found in this creation.  The Christian knows this sense that we can have so much here, but the all of life cannot be found here.  We do not find ultimate satisfaction in this present creation.

But there is a flip side to our relationship with this creation.  This was expressed in a blog by Natalie Trust.  Natalie is one of my favorite bloggers, as is Christie.  Natalie is sometimes more provocative, and sometimes is more challenging to my perspective.  I say that to say that I have learned to listen to her, and to think about what she says, for whether or not I always agree with her I know that she has thought, felt, and understood things I have never begun to think about.  She wrote a blog about how she went to the ocean shore and felt as though God was offering her peace at the beach as much as he did in the Eucharist.  If you've ever read Natalie's description of her sense of gratitude for the peace she is granted in partaking from the Eucharist, you would readily understand how she does not take the Eucharist lightly or consider its benefits as merely symbolic or trivial. so when Natalie says she felt as if she had received the peace of God at the beach I don't for a moment take her as being flippant about the matters of the grace offered through the sacraments of the church.  But the truth is we have all likely had one of those moments when we've experienced God's grace as we came to appreciate something about creation.  How could any of us ever have read the Psalms without realizing that the Psalmists often found they experienced nearness to God in God's creation.  We have a relationship with this creation that is part of how we meet God, even if we don't find our ultimate satisfaction in merely feeling close to God in creation.  We hear Christ in the Scriptures, have him given to us in the Supper, know him in a brother or a sister, and yes also we know him in the mountains, valleys, and varied life and scenery of creation.  I think this all meets together so that there is something which validates both Christie's and Natalie's experiences from a truth that has been essential to the Christian tradition since the very beginning.

            It was not very long ago I saw a blurb about a book on Genesis One written by John H. Walton.  The blurb written about Walton’s book described how Walton believed that Genesis One shows the creation as being formed as if a temple were being built.  I never thought of the creation as a temple.  Instead of reading John Walton’s book immediately, I tied to think how the Bible might show the creation as if it were a temple.  I decided to test the theory before reading Walton's book.

 

Central Park, New York City

Creation preserved within the city of Man.

 

 

A bald eagle caught in flight above Central Park

Creation yearning for our redemption

The two above photographs from an article

In the Daily Telegraph, UK

 

One indication of the answer I discovered came to me as I thought of Solomon praising God during the dedication of the temple.  Solomon compared the temple in Jerusalem with heaven and the highest heaven.  He prayed: “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built.”  (II Chronicles 6:18 RSV)  No temple, not even the heavens and the highest heavens, or the heavens and the earth can contain God.  A temple is not a place where God can be confined.  Rather a temple is the place where God bends down to embrace a child or bends down to hear an elderly person's feeble voice.  A temple is where God meets with his people in the midst of the earth.  But when we enter a temple we expect to see icons, paintings, or at least design that seems to make us feel that the God of this temple or cathedral is glorious and majestic.  St. Paul describes how God has given us this sense of the glorious and majestic in creation.  St. Paul writes: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” (Romans 1:20 RSV)  The glory of God, his eternality, his deity, and all has been inscribed into the natural iconography of creation.

This all began coming together for me as I read Christie Purifoy’s blog.  She described how she realized as wonderful as the things she enjoyed were, that ultimately her satisfaction wasn't in this creation.  I wouldn't argue with her conclusion, yes it is true, never is this creation alone enough to satisfy our yearnings and desires for God.  But there was another side to it.  Something almost none of us noticed but St. Paul did.  If we did not find satisfaction in the creation, neither did the Creation experience satisfaction in us.  St. Paul said the creation had been suppressed into futility.  He said creation was in a state of travailing, and that it was groaning hungrily for the day when God reveals his sons and daughters in glory.  For that would be the day when creation found its fullness.  That is when I realized that our redemption has been intertwined with creation’s final restoration.  Our human redemption and the earth's full restoration are forever intertwined.

Do you see the implications?  It means that Christ came into creation to save creation.  He has not only come into humanity to save humanity, but also has come into creation to save all of creation.  It also means little things, like what might happen when this spring Christie is working on the  garden and maybe some frustration sets in that she might be able to laugh at it all and say to her garden “I suppose you are feeling the futility of it all upon you, well we are in this together.”  This creation isn't a disposable towel to throw away at the end of the universe, but is our home and temple wherein God will meet with man and all of his creation.  Natalie can still feel the ocean waves coming against her as if a gift of God speaking peace to her soul.  She will know that this temple, this creation, defiled as it were by sin's presence on this earth, is yet a temple God plans to restore.  So whether one feels as if God has spoken to them in the good things of creation, or if God beckons to us from beyond this creation, we wait for the revealing of the sons and daughters in the day of Christ's glory.

            I can hear an objection to all this, an objection I once voiced.  Someone asks, “Isn’t this all going to be burned up?  But will we believers not also likely be saved as through fire?  What sort of a fire is it that burns wood, hay, and straw but allows gold, silver, and precious stone to pass through the fire?  It is a refiner's fire intended to incinerate dross but to preserve gold.  The dross is burnt away in the fire, while all that is precious is passed into the new vessel.  The old passed away as the dross dropped out of the refining process.  The new is composed wholly of fine precious things.  That is why I can sing with great joy the song, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”  It will be a world where Christ, creation and the redeemed of the Lord rejoice forevermore.  We will hear the “Peace be with you” at the seashore and we will also know that now we have come home, truly home.

 

Molten gold – burning away imperfections

Bringing new out of the old