Creator, not magician

When I was a child – I had a childish view of God. I saw Him as a gray-bearded superman in a long white robe up in the clouds, waving His arms about while summoning lightning, wind, thunder and rain. With a blink of His eye he would cause oceans to part, dead men to rise, mountains to emerge from the sea with white-hot volcanic fury, the earth to open up and swallow the enemies of His children in a single gulp, and so on. This was, to me, how God always did things. While there were events that occurred here on earth in very unexciting, natural, explainable ways, things we see every day and understand somewhat – God's ways were always awesome in splendor, unexplainable, instantaneous, scoffing at the laws of physics and nature as if He were their enemy.

As I have grown, I have begun to see God a little differently. Although I believe He can do everything I just mentioned, if He so chooses, I now think that, perhaps, He generally prefers to do His will in ways that seem less dramatic to us. Now – I think we all know this, but I’m not sure the world understands that we do. I think the world sees our God (or our perception of Him) as the great magician in the sky. Anything miraculous, explanation-defying, bewildering...well, that’s God’s doing. Of course, when people study the nature of things they often discover that, lo and behold, there’s a natural and logical cause for what we once chalked up to supernatural handiwork. Then they say, “See – it wasn’t God after all,” leaving us, they presume, to grapple with doubt.

Sadly, we sometimes do just that, or we stand tall in our faith (as we should) and move on. I don’t believe, though, that the doubt-casters are necessarily wrong in their understanding of the natural manifestations of what we know is God’s work – but, rather, they simply don’t see God in it. This is because they believe (and so do many Christians) that God only does magic. The more “magic” man’s wisdom can explain, the more God seems to disappear.

WRONG! God is not a magician. He created not just this earth, but the very laws and natural forces that affect it and every bit of matter (or anti-matter) in the universe. Why? Because He’s a Creator, not a magician. Magicians wave their arms and, poof, rabbits just appear (or seem to). They can’t actually conceive of rabbits, decide how they should be formed, deploy and manage the processes by which they form, then oversee these processes to their full completion in the form of a little white bunny. That...only God can do. And without Him – it will not happen. Ever.

God also installed in us, His creation, this very creative nature of His, so that we might relate to Him a little. Let’s examine, for a moment, this human impulse to create. Imagine an artist is given a magic wand. All he has to do is think of a picture, wave the wand, and the image will appear on the canvas exactly as the artist imagined it. No more mixing colors, no more tedious and laborious work, no more patience. Do you think an artist would be interested in having this wand? As an artist myself, I can tell you that the answer is “no.” Oh, maybe for that fluffy commercial stuff artists have to throw together to put food on the table – but never would an artist, a creative expresser, lazily bypass the process of creation of a masterpiece. Where’s the love in that? Every stroke has to be loving and painstaking – bearing his mark, his personality, himself. And so I wonder if God is like this, too.

Consider this familiar type of scenario. A woman in the church has a dire need for a $2000 medical procedure. She brings the need to the church and the church prays for her. A man in the church offers to prepare her taxes for her and discovers that she is completely unaware of the many tax benefits available to her. So he does her taxes and her refund check is a whopping $1500. That combined with the collection of a love offering pays for the operation. So...did God do this? Did He answer the prayers of His people? Well, not the god the world thinks we believe in. But we know that God did answer those prayers. There was no magic, no mystery that defies explanation, no instant gratification, but God did His work. Could He have made the money instantly and mysteriously appear in her bank account? Yes. So then why didn’t He? Because, I think, He’s a Creator, not a magician. He created processes so he could use them. He created us so He could use us. That’s His nature.

When I was a child I would have asked, “Why would God go through all that when He could just make things appear?” Now, as an artist, I ask, “Why would God just make things appear when He can actually Create them?”

Brothers and Sisters, God can do all things, but we will never understand, in this life, why and how and when. Remain faithful and someday, as Dottie Rambo wrote, we shall behold him. Keep reaching through.