What God Does

The philosopher Gottfried Leibniz once asked the question "why is there something rather than anything at all?" Our answer is that there is something (i.e. a universe) rather than nothing because of God's creative power. God is the creator of all things. This is a basic premise that we take for granted. But it begs another 'why' question: why does God create?

An answer to this question is implicit in the Hebrew Bible lesson from the Revised Common Lectionary, which speaks of God's creative activity:

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the LORD for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.

The answer to the second 'why' question is that God creates because it is God's nature to create. God takes delight and joy in creation. The fact that it is God's nature to create is evident in the scope of God's creative activity. The universe is immensely large and possibly infinite in volume. Our Milky Way Galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter, and our nearest sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located roughly 2.5 million light years away. There are probably more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Galaxies range in size from dwarfs with as few as ten million stars, to giants with up to one trillion stars, all orbiting the galaxy's center of mass.

Even within our own planet, which as indicated above, is an infinitesimally small part of the known universe, God has done a lot of creating. And not only has God created, but God has created us, beings who create ourselves. As God's children, God's creative power lies within us and God continues to sustain us through God's power.

Our sin creates a disruption, an anomaly, in our nature as God's children. The fact that God has to expend energies to bring us to salvation does not limit what God can do--God has infinite power and grace. But it limits our own capacity to fully participate in God's creative activity through creating ourselves. Until each and every one of us gets our act together and lives a life of light and holiness, we do violence to ourselves and to each other--we destroy rather than create. We get in the way of God's creative activity.

God's nature is to create. That means that our nature, as God's children, is to create. We cannot create until we turn to God, accept the salvation that is offered to us in Christ, turn from our violence and hatred, and become transformed in the image and likeness of God.