Thought for Today
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, 2 the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.
Psalm 19:1 The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Psalm 24:1 The earth is the LORD's and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it;
Acts 17:24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands,
“Let us not be ashamed to take pious delight in the works of God open and manifest in this most beautiful theater.” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.14.20)
I must admit that when I read or hear the world theater, I think about the cinema, the place where Hollywood ‘moving pictures’ are shown. In my youth, that was usually our neighborhood theater. In my teens, the theater was the site for many of my dates with Greta where we saw the current hit movies. Sometimes we went to one of the neighborhood theaters, sometimes we went to one of the three downtown theaters in Houston. In the early years of our marriage, we had season tickets to the Alley Theater in downtown Houston where live dramas were presented.
This morning, as I sat down to read Coffee with Calvin, I encountered that line above from the Institutes. As I am typing these words, I am looking toward God’s “beautiful theater” through the windows which backdrop my computer.
In these Thoughts and in my sermons, I have made numerous references to the field behind our home. The back of our home faces an open field. The survey shows the field to be approximately 3 acres. Three acres is miniscule compared to the farms and ranches of Texas and the Southwest. However, those 3 acres were a true blessing to Greta and me during the pandemic.
Through that long year when so many of us isolated ourselves and practiced ‘social distancing,’ we would spend long hours sitting on our patio and looking out into that field. Spring, summer, autumn and winter, dressed appropriately for the season, we sat and watched God’s “most beautiful theater.” Sometimes the actors in that theater were the multitude of various species of bird. We would watch them soar in the air. They would ascend, swoop and dive. They would cavort, chasing each other and acting out their part in God’s dramatic Creation.
Other times the actors would be the plethora of fauna. Even today, long after the pandemic, we enjoy watching the turkeys, deer, coyotes, foxes and squirrels Each plays out their designated roll in God’s drama. Sometimes they too cavort; sometimes they play the villainous role, destructively eating on the plants in Greta’s gardens.
I find a soothing, restorative serenity in Calvin’s “pious delight.” Sadly, piety has taken on a negative context in our modern world. The word means, “Devotion and commitment to God expressed in the Christian life through a variety of actions . . . The term is sometimes used synonymously with ‘spirituality.’” (Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, pg.210) Even more sadly, some Christians seem to be embarrassed by taking delight in anything in life. I have spent much of my life as a Presbyterian, a denomination within the Reformed tradition based on Calvin’s works. Presbyterians are sometimes called “God’s Frozen Chosen” and seem obsessed with doing everything “decently and in order.”
I almost feel guilty admitting that a portion of my “pious delight” as I observe God’s “most beautiful theater” is in the riotous array of colors, sizes and shapes in the theater. There is an organized disorder in the field I look at. No 2 plants are exactly alike. Every ‘critter’ looks a bit unique and different. There is an abundance of green, but there are also various shades of blue, red, lavender, rust, yellow and even white.
As I relish the ‘eye candy’ out my window, or as we sit on the patio in the shade of our umbrella, the only uniformity I see is the truth that all I see is the handwork of our Creator God. And, as I think about that, I pray, “Psalm 8:3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; 4 what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? 5 Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”
Stay safe, thank God, trust God,
Pastor Ray