October 1st
Come, See, Give, Live
Hebrews 1:1-2 (The Message)
Going through a long line of prophets, God has been addressing our ancestors in different ways for centuries. Recently he spoke to us directly through his Son. By his Son, God created the world in the beginning and it will all belong to the Son at the end. This Son perfectly mirrors God, and is stamped with God’s nature. He holds everything together by what He says—powerful words…
Many years ago, I read a column in “Christianity Today” by Timothy George, the founding dean of Samford’s Beeson Divinity School. He was writing of God’s providence and faithfulness from the beginning of the universe to its consummation. He called it a “Big Picture of Faith.”
In one section of the article, he speaks of generosity in a way that shook me – in that “good” way, where you are both undone and amazed. It is what we hope for each one of us on our Journey of Generosity.
The Maker of heaven and earth is at once the Triune God of holiness and love. The brute power to create and order the universe is not the most decisive mark of God’s divinity. What makes God God is the relationship of total and mutual self-giving by which the Father gives everything to the Son, and the Son offers back all that He has to glorify the Father, the love of each being established and sealed by the Holy Spirit who proceeds from both.
If all this is true, then why on earth did God make the world? Not because he had to but because he chose to. God is the Lord of creation, not its midwife. God did not need to create something outside of himself as an object for his love, for God is love (1 John 4:8). There is nothing missing or lacking in God.
Yet, amazingly, out of the richness and utter sufficiency of his own being, God created the world and human beings with a creaturely reality and freedom and invites them to share in the out-splashing of his divine love for all eternity.
Indeed, the Bible speaks of God as “jealous” for his own glory and honor: He will brook no rivals. This does not make him a grudging, greedy God, like a Silas Marner counting his gold coins; rather, there is freedom, an unthreatened generosity at the heart of God.
There it is – the “out-splashing of his divine love for all eternity.” And there it hits me again – the “freedom of unthreatened generosity.”
Surely, this is the life for all who come, see, give, and live to follow Jesus. It certainly describes the life Jesus lived.
Let’s pray this prayer together…
Maker of heaven and earth, triune God of holiness and love, may we become vessels of your out-splashing love for all, and may we know the freedom of an unthreatened generosity as we come, see, give, and live in you.
