And he makes things by hand. He doesn’t crank things out on an assembly line. Each is made personally by him; no heavenly elf helpers in a cosmic workshop. Do you want or expect life to be predictable and controllable with straight lines? I do. But very few things in the nature he has created have straight lines. And he doesn’t seem to like to repeat himself. You think about that, and about the kinds of things he lets happen in your life, and you start thinking maybe crooked and unpredictable are by design, signed by him.
Leaves and clouds and rocks and mountains and rivers and people are consistent – each is clearly what it is, different from all the others that aren’t what it is. But each is also different from the others like it. People are clearly not rocks, but every person is different from every other person, every rock and cloud from every other rock and cloud.
When man does what God does – creates -- then each thing he creates is unique; each song, story, movie, painting, sculpture. There’s only one Phantom of the Opera book, and even though there have been over 15,000 performances of the play in the U.S., each is a sole performance never to be repeated in exactly the same way.
But most things man makes are unlike how God does it. Buildings have straight lines and corners, and urban and suburban landscapes are groomed, tame and orderly. But every tree in that landscape is different, even within the same species. You can plant trees all in a row or cluster them to be esthetically pleasing, but you can’t make each tree exactly like all the others.
Left to themselves, meadows and deserts and forests do what they want and that’s our expectation – natural. But give humans oversight and the expectation changes. When we moved to Austin, Texas I hated that they left the medians on many roads un-groomed and uncut -- natural. I was used to clean lines along curbs and evenly mowed grass; I wanted to tell someone, just mow it! It didn’t fit my expectation.
Hot dogs are all the same. Line a hundred up and it’s monotonous. Line up a hundred coconuts and you won’t even be able to get them to sit up right – they’re all consistently coconuts but each size and shape and color will vary a bit.
Picture frames and pencils are straight and square. Clouds and rocks? Unpredictable – each is unique.
When you see God’s made-by-hand approach to creating, his love of one-at-a-time, it can help your expectation for what a day, or an experience or a relationship (or a life) should be: As unpredictable and unique as a cloud or thunderstorm. No straight edges. No formula. Every experience and challenge a one-of-a-kind, made-by-hand event, signed by the artist.
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This is more of The God Show. We’re in the nature channel, seeing ways the whole earth is filled with God’s glory. The previous post is HERE. You can find out more HERE.
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