X Marks the Spot
X Marks the Spot
Twinkling stars and many-colored sunsets, waves of grain and sparkling streams . . . the creation is a delight. Forever and ever, people have looked around them and wondered, how? And why?
Many have pondered all manner of things and gone off to look for God. There must be a God behind it all, a Reason who made it right . . . who divided darkness and light. But where’s the chart that shows the way, the spiritual compass that points us on the path?
It’s easy to get blown off course and to wash ashore in the enchanted land of belly-button gazing. To wander in circles seeking God within when all the while He is without. To lose the vision that launched our quest as we grow ever more entangled in the briar patch of our own understanding.
The purpose of the creation is to reveal its Creator.
That sunset is an excellent place to start the search. The God who made it is distinct from His creation, beyond and above. He chooses to enter it at various times in sundry ways, but He is never contained by what He has made.
He reveals Himself at His pleasure, and it has pleased Him to offer His creatures more specific information than the sunset provides. In days gone by, He anointed certain men to speak His truth into the world. He called them “prophets.”
The prophet called Moses carried God’s law down from the mountaintop to demonstrate God’s love to His people – for the law was always about love. A God of order made a covenant with His chosen nation and gave them His law to teach them how to love Him and to love one another according to the Creator’s purpose.
But His love extends to all His people and He planned from ages past to restore all who would accept His love to the relationship He had with His own
before sin corrupted it. His final prophet would reveal Him perfectly to all the world. The writer of Hebrews begins his epistle: “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son . . .”
This Son is the perfect representation of the Father. The author of Hebrews goes on to call the Son, “the brightness of (His Father’s) glory and the express
image of His person.”
The Apostle John calls Jesus Christ, God the Son, the Word – in one sense that the Greek-speaking world of that time understood that term. It meant the Reason that gives order and meaning to everything in the universe. St. John wrote: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Finally, God has given us His written word, which reveals in both Old and New Testaments not only His creation of the world but also His unfolding plan
for its redemption. St. Paul describes the Bible: “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness . . .” (2 Timothy 3:16).
St. Peter weighs in: “. . . no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God
spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:20-21).
So God is never far from those who seek Him. It’s just a matter of looking where He may be found.Ω