Lenten Devotional – Day Nine

Q. 10. How did God create man?

A. God created man male and female, after his own image, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, with dominion over the creatures.

“So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:27)

Annie Dillard once summed up a day like this: “All day long I feel created.” (Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, New York: Harper & Row, 1977, p. 25)

  Ronald Patterson tells this story about his early training in pastoral care: "One day many years ago, as part of my training, I worked at Boston City Hospital as a chaplain's assistant. I was assigned to a prison ward, and one of the prisoners there was a big-time drug dealer. It was my duty to visit him because he was very ill. Well, with the half-hearted pseudo-compassion of the typical do-gooder, I did my duty. Later, I confessed this to the Roman Catholic nun who was my supervisor. I said, 'How can I go and pray with this man who is ruining the life of this city? He deserves his illness and a whole lot more.' Do you know what she said to me?

  'Patterson, who died and elected you God? Somewhere deep within that man, covered by the layers of pain and denial and every rotten thing he has ever done, there is the kernel of God's image. Your only job is to see that spark; and the only way you can ever see it is to forget everything else about whatever anyone else has told you about right and wrong and believe with your whole heart that the spark is there. He, too, just as much as anyone you will ever meet, is a child of God's love."' - Recalled and preached by Dr. Ronald M. Patterson, Shiloh Church, Dayton, Ohio

  We sometimes forget God created all of us, even though some individuals in our society behavior less than human. As scripture reminds us God created us “very good” and both the confession and scripture tells us God created us “after his own image.” God intended far more for us within his creation than we often expect from ourselves. Later, the Shorter Catechism will deal with the question about sin, which not only forces us to live east of Eden separated from Paradise, but separates us from the love of God and his creation.

Lenten Devotional – Day Eight

Q. 9. What is the work of creation?

A. The work of creation is God’s making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good.

“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.” (Heb. 11:3)

The gospel life isn't something we learn ABOUT and then put together with instructions from the manufacturer; it's something we BECOME as God does his work of creation and salvation in us and as we accustom ourselves to a life of belief and obedience and prayer. - Eugene Peterson in Leap Over a Wall, quoted in Christianity Today, March 1, 1999, 64.

  Words, words, words. Our society is full of words: on billboards, on television screens, in newspapers and books. Words whispered, shouted and sung. Words that move, dance and change in size and color. Words that say, "Taste me, smell me, eat me, drink me, sleep with me," but most of all, "buy me." With so many words around us, we quickly say: "Well, they're just words." Thus, words have lost much of their power.

  In our world words have lost their power to create much other than confusion and frustration, but in scripture and in our answer today for question #9, God’s word has the power to create.

  Still, the word has the power to create. When God speaks, God creates. When God says, "Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3), light is. God speaks light. For God, speaking and creating are the same. It is this creative power of the word we need to reclaim. What we say is very important. When we say, "I love you," and say it from the heart, we can give another person new life, new hope, new courage. When we say, "I hate you," we can destroy another person. Let's watch our words. - Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (HarperCollins: 2006), 11.

  In a Time magazine article called "What was God thinking?" (November 14, 2005), Eric Cornell says, "Let me pose you a question, not about God but about the heavens: 'Why is the sky blue?' I offer two answers: 1) The sky is blue because of the wavelength dependence of Rayleigh scattering; 2) the sky is blue because blue is the color God wants it to be. My scientific research has been in areas connected to optical phenomena, and I can tell you a lot about the Rayleigh-scattering answer. Neither I nor any other scientist, however, has anything scientific to say about answer No. 2, the God answer. Not to say that the God answer is unscientific, just that the methods of science don't speak to that answer.