“KNOW SOMETHING? GOD ISN’T FINISHED YET”

The expression “out of the mouths of babes” is often used to comment on a statement made by a child that unwittingly nails a great truth on the head.

I couldn’t help overhear two small voices discussing the sun. I was just in time to hear a voice say, “And you know, its very big and it’s awful hot, and God made it”. A silence followed as they both considered this observation. Then the other small voice said “Yes, He did, and you know something? He isn’t finished yet”.

It is fascinating to hear a child utter an insight into the nature of things which many adults never fully realize. For centuries millions of people read the opening chapter of Genesis and were taught that the universe is God’s creation. However, for most people that act of God was understood as something that took place away back at the dawn of time, then became locked away as an interesting item in the pages of an ancient book.

For a period ironically called the Enlightenment there was made popular in the philosophy of the 18th century an image of God as the Great Watchmaker. The idea was that God had made this great watch, wound it up and set the Universe going. Essential in this version of things was that the universe was now complete.  God put it down on his galactic sized desk and merely watched it operate.  Some said - and others vehemently denied - that God stepped in from time to time to interfere a little bit with the workings.

But remember that child saying “and God isn’t finished yet?" That child got it right! Hit the nail on the head, as I’d said. Long before the Enlightenment was ever heard of, the Judeo Christian concept of God saw the process of Creation as being anything but a single event in a long ago past. Today we are recovering this immense insight when we use language such as “Climate Change”.

Creation is an endless heaving ocean of life, forming, growing, changing, dying and coming to birth in ways far beyond our imagining.

Creation is an inconceivably wonderful “IS” rather than an ancient long forgotten “WAS”!

And you know something?  – we are involved in this whole thing! Ask those two kids. They’re already beginning to learn how

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