Creation

“Who has let the wild donkey go free?

    Who has loosed the bonds of the swift donkey,

to whom I have given the arid plain for his home

    and the salt land for his dwelling place?

He scorns the tumult of the city;

    he hears not the shouts of the driver.

He ranges the mountains as his pasture,

and he searches after every green thing.”

Job 38:5-8, ESV

Job reminds me: I, we, are not at the center of the universe. Crowned with glory and honor, yes! (Ps. 8:5). But the world does not exist for us, yet so often we define things by that.

Snow? I often joke it is a result of the fall--after all, Adam and Eve could not have survived in the snow! Mosquitoes. Poison ivy.

But God’s words to Job made me humbly think--who am I to define “good”? Who is at the center of my judgment? Basil, an early church father, makes me step back and see things from the Lord’s perspective:

Each of the things that have been made fulfills its own particular purpose in creation . . . . Not a single one of these things is without worth, not a single thing has been created without a reason. . . . Shall we give up acknowledging our gratitude for those things that are beneficial and reproach the Creator for those that are destructive of our life? . . . . The scorpion’s delicate singer, which the Craftsman hollowed out like a pipe to throw venom into those it wounds. And let nobody reproach him on account of what he made, because he brought forth venomous animals, destructive and hostile to our life.”

Basil of Caesarea (1)

The futility of creation is real--but let me step back and wonder. Wonder at the beauty of a God who cannot be tamed, who creates desert flowers that bloom only every five or hundred years--who are they for? A God who cares for animals in the depths of the ocean that we haven’t even discovered yet. In April 2018, three new species of rainbow chameleons were discovered. What a creative God! Truly it exists for him, for him!

So in humility let me look for him, even in snow.

In humility, let me just wonder and not judge.

In humility, let me see the great care of our God, the great delight of our Lord in the universe. And if he cares for the sparrows, the depth-dwellers we do not know of, the rainbow chameleons unseen, how will he not care for me, for us, for our futures?

Trust.

NOTE

Cited by Douglas Moo and Jonathan Moo, Creation Care (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, MI, 2018), 99.