God's a Genius

My early morning (aka late night) devotional thoughts ... and you thought you could expect more from a seminary student than "God's a Genius."

But while I was studying tonight, that was the profundity that I mustered. I'm standing by it, and I will make a feeble attempt to explain to the masses the profundity of this realization.

Who else could have created a world, a redemptive order, a protology and eschatology that cohered so beautifully? The realities of heaven are built into the very structure of creation, and God's Word consistently gives us hints of this throughout. It is seriously amazing.

I also realized a few days ago that we couldn't glimpse who God is without the Old Testament's sacrificial system, without families, government, nature, etc. Each thing in our lives gives us a little different pictures of ultimate reality: who God is, who we are, what Christ has done, and our hope of glory. Hebrews makes it clear that earthly structures are shadowy copies of heavenly structures (e.g. the tabernacle). Without getting too speculative or heretical, isn't it amazing that God made such a beautiful world, and everything in it has the higher purpose of teaching us about him?

I've been dismayed during my three years here at how many people expect me to have lost my faith while I was at seminary. The ol' "Seminary = Cemetery," in its many permutations isn't really funny; it's tragic. Thanks be to God: my faith, my hope, my confidence of things unseen, is incalculably bigger than ever. My understanding of God's wisdom, his love, his goodness, his grace and his glory is so much bigger than I ever imagined it could be. Seminary has been the beginning of an amazing lifetime journey of learning more about God and - the natural outflow of that process - learning to love and worship Him more.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ-- to the glory and praise of God. Philippians 1:9-11