As you may have guessed, if you’re following our more recent reflections on “Faith” (which you could catch up on by clicking on the “Faith” link in the “Reflections on…” column at the right — start with “What You Believe” ), we have been working towards a more robust Christian view of the doctrine of creation.

And today we come to a delightful truth to ponder as we seek to understand reality rightly… and that is the Joy of God in creation! 

“May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in his works.”
—Psalm 104.31

The Bible teaches us that God take great pleasure and joy in the work of his hands!  Think of the oceans.  Psalm 104.25,26 says this about the ocean:  “Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great.  There go the ships, and Leviathan, which you formed to play in it.”

Leviathan.

This is a Hebrew word which basically means “Great Sea Monster.” Think of whales, the giant squid, crocodiles, etc.

Why did God create these “sea monsters”?

According to Psalm 104, one reason for their creation was just to play and to frolic in the water.  It might be 1,000 miles away from the nearest human eye, but God is rejoicing in the work of his hands.  The great oceans are teeming with innumerable living things, both small and great… and they are all declaring the glory of God!

Back when I was in college, humanity finally got around to discovering a European water spider that lives at the bottom of lakes but breathes AIR. 

This spider will come to the top of the lake, do a somersault on the surface, catch a bubble of air, and then hold the bubble over the breathing holes in the middle of its body while it swims to the bottom of the lake and spins a silk web among the seaweed.

And it keeps doing this, bubble after bubble, up and down, time after time, until a little “balloon” of air is formed under that silk web.  And that is where that spider will live… and eat… and mate… as an air-breathing creature!

For thousands and thousands of years, humanity was totally ignorant of such a creature.  But God has been enjoying that little piece of art since before the days of Abraham.

“O Lord, how manifold are your works!  In wisdom have you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.”
—Psalm 104.24

How many millions of wonders are there that God beholds with gladness every single day… which we have not yet seen or imagined?

Once we begin to understand the glory and the joy of God in his created works, even the common, everyday, repetitious aspects of creation that never change — the ones that we witness over and over every day our lives — will begin to take on new meaning for us.

Consider these delightful words from G. K. Chesterton.  I’ve never looked at creation in the same way ever since I first heard this quote, several years ago:

“It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead, a piece of clockwork.  People feel that if the universe were personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance.  This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. 

For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death, by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire.  A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue.  He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. 

But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness.  The very speed and ecstasy of his life would have the stillness of death. 

The sun rises every morning.  I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction.  Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.  His routine might be due not to a lifelessness but to a rush of life. 

The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy.  A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life.  Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged.  They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown–up person does it again until he is nearly dead!  For grown–up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. 

It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening ‘Do it again’ to the moon.  It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daises alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but he has never got tired of making them.  It may be that he has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.  The repetition in nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.  Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg.”