Creation and Cardboard

I spent some time at the National Arboretum this morning.  It was one of those rare days when everything was perfect.  The sun was bright.  The sky was that brilliant blue with just a few cotton ball clouds that decorate but never dim the light.  Leaves were still that virgin green, and flowers everywhere. 

I had gone there to spend some time praying, thinking, and writing.  As I sat there on a bench, my train of thought went something like this… 

“Lord, Your creation is such a blessing.  Thank you for this blessing today – I really needed this.”  I reflected on how good it felt to experience that kind of gratitude and adoration directed to a God who, in His greatness, is able to create everything I was seeing, yet so close and personal that I could just sit there and pour out my affection on Him.

My thought then drifted to those who are also deeply moved by the beauty I was regarding, but who direct their affections toward it, rather than toward its Creator.  I observed myself feeling a sense of grief for those people and I wondered why.

As I reflected on the cause of this surprising sadness, it occurred to me that worshipping the creation rather than the God who blessed us with it is a little like having dinner with a cardboard cutout of my wife.  True, that cardboard cutout might suggest my wife and it might not ask me to do the dishes after dinner or desire my interaction.  But, any appeal of that cardboard figure is driven only by my own selfishness, not a true desire to enjoy profound fellowship with a living person – even if true fellowship requires that I give myself to her. 

So what then is the appeal of creation apart from the Creator?  I wanted to understand.  As I attempted to empathize with those for whom I grieved, I was struck by the large columns taken from the Capitol building and replanted in the middle of a great field.  They are sublime out there.  And then it occurred to me that it is the sublime that holds the appeal.  Something in us is deeply attracted to greatness, vastness, deepness, richness – and one can see all these things in the creation.  That same breathlessness one experiences at the rim of the Grand Canyon, one must also feel when contemplating the size of the universe.  It is a strangely alluring terror.  I could see how one would want more, and I began to understand the desire of those who seem to pour out their affection on the creation. 

For just a moment I wondered if this temptation could capture my heart.  Yet, as something deep in me gravitated to the natural allure of the great and limitless, I remember that the very thing in me that desires the sublime was put there by the Creator.  For You, Lord, are the ultimate, limitless sublime.  You, Lord, are a personal being who relates to me, and in so doing, calls me to give myself to You in communion.  Any temptation to worship the sublime in creation is, therefore, in the end, just cardboard. 

No, the creation is just that – your creation, Lord.  And my heart grieves for those who miss You in it.

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