thought exercise from psalm 104

The South African politician Nic Diederichs—a prominent leader during the apartheid era—once made a rather provocative observation: God, he said, dislikes deadly uniformity. I hate to admit that I lik...

If birds could write books, their story of creation would no doubt read quite differently than ours. In the first place, I expect they would make quite a lot out of that wind of God that swept over th...

It is interesting that in Scripture, in both the original Hebrew and Greek languages, the word used in speaking of the Spirit is the word that can also mean “wind.” In like manner, the Holy Spirit wor...

I love watching young boys and girls build things with Legos. Their small, creative masterpieces cannot help but reflect their image-bearing nature and remind us we were all made to make things. When ...

Unlike most of us, Francis of Assissi's love of preaching extended beyond just human beings. On one of his journeys through the valley of Spoleto, near Bevagna, Francis of Assisi came upon a large...

I have observed through the years that most Christians have little understanding of the word ‘season’. Our Lord is a seasonal God; He comes, He departs. His faithfulness never changes, but His seasons...

The first garden (Eden) was perfection. In it was the possibility not only for the purest fulfillment of the human race but for all of creation. It was meant to be a paradise, which is, in fact, no di...

To ask our (not so) simple question in another way: Why did God make this world? Why did he make a world for his own glory in Christ and then fill it to the brim with pleasures—physical pleasures, sen...

“He’ll be coming and going” he had said. “One day you’ll see him and another you won’t. He doesn’t like being tied down–and of course he has other countries to attend to. It’s quite all right. He’ll o...

Again and again in China I talked to people who had never heard of Christianity, never heard of Jesus, never heard a single word from the Bible. Yet through nature and their God-given conscience, many...

The Jews were not the only religious people in the ancient world. There were others, such as the Akkadians, Egyptians, and Phoenicians, and they had their own creation stories. When one compares the ...

There is an Indian restaurant in my neighborhood called Bollywood Theatre. I once went to lunch with my friend Todd Miles, a theologian at a local seminary. Taking in our first few bites, he blurted o...

To make suggests making something out of something else the way a carpenter makes wooden boxes out of wood. To create suggests making something out of nothing the way an artist makes paintings or poem...

You may feel as if you are sitting still right now, but it’s an illusion of miraculous proportions. Planet Earth is spinning around its axis at a speed of 1,000 miles per hour. Every 24 hours, planet ...

In The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien imagines the creation of the world as a divine chorale, with creation appearing out of nothingness like a glorious unfurling tapestry as God sings and the heavenl...

In this short excerpt, the author and priest Robert Farrar Capon describes just how intricate and beautiful one single part of God’s creation is, the chicken egg: Forget for the moment the fantastic...

Scholar John Walton points out that when Genesis 1 calls the world before creation tōhû, it is a modern cultural misunderstanding and mistranslation to think that it is describing the world as “formle...

Julian of Norwich was a fourteenth-century mystic-theologian who maybe understood the belovedness of creation and new creation better than anyone. In the fifth chapter of her book Revelations of Divin...

A doctor, an engineer, and a politician were arguing as to which profession was older. “Well,” argued the doctor, “without a physician mankind could not have survived, so I am sure that mine is the ol...

Recently, I was working in my yard when the blooms on my gardenia plant caught my eye. I took off my gloves, laid my clippers aside, and allowed my mind to linger on those flowers. Inhaling the intoxi...

George MacDonald, The Scottish author who had a profound effect on C.S. Lewis among others, once wrote a letter to his father about what he believed would be a great obstacle to his faith; that once h...

There are three ways to eat a salad: the American Way; the Weird Way, and the Right Way. The American Way of eating a salad is to fill your bowl with some iceberg lettuce or some spinach leaves, some ...