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Bearing a New Song into Your Presence

A “characteristic common to God and man,” mystery writer Dorothy Sayers declares, is “the desire and ability to make things.”1 In the book of Genesis, creation is not a one-time event, but a continuous, ongoing process. God did not wind up the world like a clock, as many eighteenth-century Deists insisted, then let it tick away on its own.2 Rather, God is always creating, sustaining, preserving, animating, and coaxing his universe into fruitfulness. Augustine posited that if God did not exert his creative will at each and every moment, the universe would simply collapse.3 “All creatures are balanced upon the creative word of God, as if upon a bridge of diamond,” notes the Russian Orthodox theologian Philaret of Moscow; “above them is the abyss of divine infinitude, below them that of their own nothingness.”4

The ultimate philosophical conundrum, according to seventeenth-century German thinker Gottfried Leibniz, is “Why is there something, rather than nothing?”5 Multiplicity, instead of zero? Or, as William James boldly asserts, “from nothing to being there is no logical bridge.”6 Christians believe that God gave birth to the universe ex nihilo. He did not stir together a brew of pre-existing matter; no, he invented time and space, setting the great chain of being into motion—stretching from amoebas to primates. In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis has the lion, Aslan (who stands for Christ), sing the land of Narnia into existence. With “gentle, rippling music,” he made the valley “green with grass.” From the “deep, prolonged notes” of the creator, “a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge . . . And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes,” primroses began “suddenly appearing in every direction.”7

Second-century theologian Irenaeus draws on a quite different metaphor to describe creation. He refers to the Son and Holy Spirit as the “hands of God.” By this, he meant that God needed no tools external to himself to accomplish his work. The Son and the Spirit, who are so very close to the Father yet still distinct from him, resemble the two hands of a human being. 8 With these bare hands, as it were, God formed the entire cosmos—everything we see and all that we do not even know how to detect. Think, for instance, of angels or the modern scientific notion of “dark matter.”

In Genesis, God calls, fashions, distinguishes, and names a broad assortment of elements—sun, moon, stars, seas, land, birds, fish, and creeping things. This universe, with its billions of worlds, stretches in every known direction; the findings of modern astronomy even indicate that it is actually expanding. “And if God’s incomprehensibility does not grip us,” insists the great Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, “if it does not draw us into his superluminous darkness, if it does not call us out of the little house of our homely, close-hugged truths . . . we have misunderstood . . . the words of Christianity.”9 Or, as nineteenth-century American actress Charlotte Cushman declares, “[W]hen God conceived the world, that was Poetry; he formed it, and that was Sculpture; he colored it, and that was Painting; and then, crowning work of all, he peopled it with living beings, and that was the grand, divine, eternal Drama.”10

Each of us is an actor in God’s great play. But I am afraid that he did not give us a script to memorize; instead, he encourages improvisation. In fact, a number of the great discoveries in history appear to have been accidents. Serendipity is a word coined by Horace Walpole to depict that happy condition of someone who fails to find what he originally sought, yet, in the process, stumbles upon something just as good or even better.11 This was based on what happened to the heroes in the old Persian fairy tale, “The Three Princes of Serendip.”12 But to experience serendipity, we must ever be vigilant, with our eyes wide open. One is reminded of the lad who was called upon to read aloud in class. After the teacher had thanked him for his elocution, she asked if he would kindly explain what he had just read. “I don’t know,” he mumbled, “I wasn’t listening.”13

Fortunately, there are moments when God makes us acutely aware. “Everybody knows such occasional hours or days of freshened emotional responses when events that usually pass almost unnoticed, suddenly move you deeply,” notes novelist Dorothy Canfield, “when a sunset lifts you to exaltation, when a squeaking door throws you into a fit of exasperation, when a clear look of trust in a child’s eyes moves you to tears, or an injustice reported in the newspapers to flaming indignation, a good action to a sunny warm love of human nature, a discovered meanness in yourself or another, to despair.”14

Each day I take time for prayer and reflection on Scripture, while also making sure to do some form of aerobic exercise, like jogging, and devote at least thirty minutes to some special project I am working on, whether it is writing, photography, or another pursuit. Over time, these small creative bursts do add up.

Popular notions of creativity focus on the dramatic and seemingly spontaneous. Mozart could hear and visualize entire symphonies and even scenes from operas in his head.15 Beethoven, on the other hand, jotted down fragments of themes in his notebooks, which he labored over for years. Critics are still amazed that masterpieces could arise out of such clumsiness.16 I know my first draft is generally pathetic, as is often the second and third. Still, I keep pecking away. In the surge of creative excitement, I believe each new piece is the best I have ever penned. Within a few days, the awful truth sinks in, so I start again. “As I write,” Christian poet Luci Shaw observed, “I have the sensation of being at the center of a small vortex of enlarging connections.”17

Psychologists have discovered that there is an immense capacity for perception in each of us which has barely been tapped.18 And it may take only a “single small seed” to set us thinking, suggests novelist Henry James:19 a chance conversation, a story read, a painting seen, a witty riposte by a friend, an illustration from a sermon, a meritorious deed observed. That seed sparks the imagination, making us, like the Psalmist, eager to “sing to the Lord a new song” (Ps. 98:1).

Would that all of the Lord’s children were poets! Yet, God in his democracy has bestowed crafts and hobbies. In 1870, a pioneer woman wrote in her diary concerning her love for quilts: “I make them warm to keep my family from freezing; I make them beautiful to keep my heart from breaking.”20 As gathered believers, we can beautify God’s house with floral displays, banners, woodworking, and embroidery, as well as those well-trodden paths that touch the heart: gardening and cooking.21 “I have seen homecrafted stained glass in a Midwest village which recalled Malraux’s metaphor for the art: ‘A mosaic that has found its place in the sun,’” declares theologian Roger Hazelton. “I recall chalices and crosses of honest workmanship, dance dramas that were not mincing and contrived, dossal curtains that were all the more beautiful because they had been made by women of the congregation. All this is good,” concludes Hazelton, “since the real enemy of style and taste in church art is the ready-made, commercial product”—which smacks of an impoverished imagination.22

The legendary rare-book collector, A. Edward Newton, urged young people to uncover a hobby, no, preferably two—one for indoors and one for outdoors.23 For when a child finds something that fascinates and intrigues, he actively seeks out additional information, develops new skills, makes friends with those of a similar bent, and feels a sense of accomplishment for something well done. I remember the endless hours I spent listening to shortwave radio as a teenager. Those voices brought me in touch with countries I had barely heard of.

What do you like to do in your spare time? How might you give that talent to the Lord or share it with others? Perhaps several people have a similar gift, so the church could form a fellowship or guild. Upon completing some noteworthy task, you may wish to exclaim with Dorothy Sayers’ heroine, Harriet Vane: I “feel like God on the Seventh Day.”24 The great lyrical poet Rilke famously advised the young writer Franz Xavier Kappus: “die Fragen selbst liebzuhaben” and “Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.”25 In other words, love life’s vexing questions; struggle and wrestle with them until you live into the answers. We have the bedrock of Scripture and church teaching; now let us also use them as a springboard for every kind of worthwhile project.

“Well! We are all condamnés [condemned],” nineteenth-century art critic Walter Pater once wrote, “as Victor Hugo says: we are all under sentence of death but with a sort of indefinite reprieve—les hommes sont tous condamnés à mort avec des sursis indéfinis: we have an interval, and then our place knows us no more. Some spend the interval in listlessness,” Pater continues, “some in high passions, the wisest—at least ‘among the children of this world’—in art and song. For our one chance lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.” 26

It is our calling, adds French Protestant theologian Gabriel Vahanian, to “wait without idols.”27 Perhaps we have become embroiled in lifestyles of pleasure that poison everything we touch or have developed habits of acquisitiveness, so that we are living high on the hog at expense of others’ well-being. Now is the time to re-examine our bearings, set our priorities straight. In the harsh words of Jesus, you should figuratively cut off your hand, pluck out your eye, or amputate your foot—if such appendages prevent you from rejoicing in the truth.28

Father of lights, stir up those gifts and talents deep within us, that through patience and determination we might bring them to fruition in your good time. Give us a sense of excitement in this adventure of living for you. Fertilize our imaginations, so that we become co-creators in the ongoing kingdom of grace. May we come, at last, bearing a new song into your presence.

1. Sayers, Mind of the Maker, 34.

2. Charley, “Deism,” 290.

3. Augustine, On Genesis, 296–97; cf. Polkinghorne, Faith of a Physicist, 75.

4. Lossky, Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 92.

5. Parkinson, Leibniz: Philosophical Writings, 199; cf. Kolakowski, Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?, 114–22.

6. James, Some Problems of Philosophy, 40; cf. Holt, Why Does the World Exist?, 30.

7. Lewis, Magician’s Nephew, 123, 126.

8. Hill, History of Christian Thought, 28; cf. Irenaeus, “Against Heresies,” 487–88.

9. Rahner, Theological Investigations, Vol. IV, 359.

10. Clement, Charlotte Cushman, 53.

11. Pickering, Captives of the Sun, 232.

12. Hendrickson, Facts on File Encyclopedia Word and Phrase, 474.

13. Gerard, “Biological Basis of Imagination,” 235.

14. Canfield, “How ‘Flint and Fire’ Started and Grew,” 211.

15. Mozart, “A Letter [1783?],” 55.

16. Spender, “Making of a Poem,” 114; cf. Stringham, Listening to Music Creatively, 391.

17. Shaw, “Beauty and Creative Impulse,” 85.

18. Underhill, Mysticism, 56.

19. James, “Preface to The Spoils of Poynton,” 71–73.

20. Shaw, “Beauty and Creative Impulse,” 88.

21. Bauer, Arts Ministry. Throughout Bauer relates a number of fascinating examples.

22. Hazelton, Theological Approach to Art, 85–86.

23. Newton, Amenities of Book-Collecting, 2.

24. Sayers, Gaudy Night, 199–200.

25. Rilke, “Brief 4,” 18–19; cf. Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 35.

26. Pater, “Conclusion to Studies,” 529; cf. Pater, Studies in the History of the Renaissance, 120.

27. Vahanian, Wait Without Idols. This is a quote from the chorus in section 5 of W.H. Auden’s “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio.”

28. Blumhardt, Action in Waiting, 168–9.