Week 15—Thursday Colossians 1:28-29
Week 15—THURSDAY
AN UNFINISHED WORLD A GOOD WORLD
Another question remains: If the laws of God are the same whether in nature and human nature, and the God of Grace and the God of nature are the same God, then why did he create mosquitoes, disease germs, cobras, typhoons, earthquakes? What function do they perform? Of course we do not know the final plans which the all-wise Creator has in mind for the redemption of persons and nature. But we can see through the chinks in the lattice of nature the trend of things which helps us chart God’s final purpose.
The purpose of God, our Father, seems to be to produce character in God’s children. Not their ease, not their happiness except as a by-product, but their character. This means that this life would seem to be a vale of character-making. If this be the end, then God could not create a perfect environment. For character is produced out of overcoming oppositions, obstacles, impediments. So God had to create a world unfinished. God’s purpose seems to have been to leave creation unfinished so that we could help finish it. God left just enough opposition on which to sharpen our wits and our characters. If God had made us perfect beings in a perfect world, we would never have developed—nothing to sharpen us on. Perfect beings in a perfect world would lack one thing—growth!
But in leaving this universe open to completion, God allowed for the possibility of helping complete creation and completing ourselves in the process. Scientific persons would never have come into being were there no disease germs to study and overcome. Engineers are produced by the need of making earthquake-proof houses, bridging raging rivers, and building dams to beneficently distribute wasted waters. Character is produced by intelligence, directed effort, and good will. This world is exactly the kind of world to produce the most precious thing in the universe—character.
O Loving Father, your love has set us hard tasks, but your purpose has also set us wonderful goals. So we take the hard tasks for we see the goal, “Give us not tasks equal to our powers, but powers equal to our tasks.” Give us Grace and more Grace. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall match my redeemed powers against unredeemed nature.