Helpful repetitions
This week's mystical goodness is a short bit from Revelation 4:8-11:
These verses do a great job of summarizing the meaning of life and the starting point for God's glory. God is worthy to receive glory and honor and power. We don't just worship him in order to kiss up to him for goodies. It isn't mere flattery. God truly is great.
God created all things. It was his idea and desire to create them just as they are. It was his idea and desire that they exist. He is the designer. He is the inventor. He is the financier and producer of all we see. Do you have a problem with spiders? Take it up with God. He is the one who decided that they were good and necessary. Are you really into fresh black raspberries? Give the praise to him. He's the one who decided to innovate and coax them out as a separate tasty berry species. He doesn't patent them and charge us royalties for what he has created. Everything was made for us, and is free for us to enjoy and use and modify as we see fit. We're stewards of his creation, not its copyright lawyers or its licensees.
It's important to remember that God does not require our praise, but he really is worthy of being praised. Everything is his creation. If we are not happy with it, we can't really criticize it, because it's his idea, and his resources went into building it. Take the four pieces-parts creatures who are announcing his praise 24/7, for example. Does that seem a little weird to you? Does IBM corporation pay people to sit in its lobby and extol their products all day, every day, out loud? Does the US have people sitting in its capitol building singing patriotic songs 24/7? It seems like kind of a waste of resources, especially if you've gone through the extra trouble of engineering a whole specific line of custom-made creatures to do exactly that, but it's God's idea. He has such abundance, and such creativity, and such power, that it's both possible and necessary for who he is. If you want to draw a blue six-legged duck on your paper when it's arts and crafts time, that's your right. The world is God's paper, and he can produce whatever he wants. He is uniquely gifted in that sense, and he makes that power available to us. God is truly Great.
Not only can God do all of that cool stuff, and not only is he really beneficial to us, but he's going to live forever. He's always lived, and he will always live. He's not going to quit after a four eon term, or take a two millennium vacation and leave us to run the store. He's not going to die and leave us orphans. Nobody and nothing else is that permanent, except us in relationship with him. And that's his gift too.
It's easy to forgot all of why we're here and what is so great about God and Christianity. You can't just praise God because the hymnbook says so, or because your friends will like you better if you do. You have to remember that God really is great, and that the world is full of reasons why.
Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
"You are worthy, our Lord and God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
and by your will they were created
and have their being."
These verses do a great job of summarizing the meaning of life and the starting point for God's glory. God is worthy to receive glory and honor and power. We don't just worship him in order to kiss up to him for goodies. It isn't mere flattery. God truly is great.
God created all things. It was his idea and desire to create them just as they are. It was his idea and desire that they exist. He is the designer. He is the inventor. He is the financier and producer of all we see. Do you have a problem with spiders? Take it up with God. He is the one who decided that they were good and necessary. Are you really into fresh black raspberries? Give the praise to him. He's the one who decided to innovate and coax them out as a separate tasty berry species. He doesn't patent them and charge us royalties for what he has created. Everything was made for us, and is free for us to enjoy and use and modify as we see fit. We're stewards of his creation, not its copyright lawyers or its licensees.
It's important to remember that God does not require our praise, but he really is worthy of being praised. Everything is his creation. If we are not happy with it, we can't really criticize it, because it's his idea, and his resources went into building it. Take the four pieces-parts creatures who are announcing his praise 24/7, for example. Does that seem a little weird to you? Does IBM corporation pay people to sit in its lobby and extol their products all day, every day, out loud? Does the US have people sitting in its capitol building singing patriotic songs 24/7? It seems like kind of a waste of resources, especially if you've gone through the extra trouble of engineering a whole specific line of custom-made creatures to do exactly that, but it's God's idea. He has such abundance, and such creativity, and such power, that it's both possible and necessary for who he is. If you want to draw a blue six-legged duck on your paper when it's arts and crafts time, that's your right. The world is God's paper, and he can produce whatever he wants. He is uniquely gifted in that sense, and he makes that power available to us. God is truly Great.
Not only can God do all of that cool stuff, and not only is he really beneficial to us, but he's going to live forever. He's always lived, and he will always live. He's not going to quit after a four eon term, or take a two millennium vacation and leave us to run the store. He's not going to die and leave us orphans. Nobody and nothing else is that permanent, except us in relationship with him. And that's his gift too.
It's easy to forgot all of why we're here and what is so great about God and Christianity. You can't just praise God because the hymnbook says so, or because your friends will like you better if you do. You have to remember that God really is great, and that the world is full of reasons why.
Comments
Post a Comment