And so, on Day 2 of "staying put," I found myself stuck on the couch in the living room of my apartment, watching the whole season of Planet Earth 2, a BBC show I discovered on Netflix that takes you through different regions of the earth to introduce you to the various animal species that manage (against the odds, of course) to live in them. It had just enough going on to engage my weak attention; but the stunning scenery, the soothing pulse of the narrator's voice, and the slow pace of the show itself brought a peace to my mind. I could just sit there and look at the beauty, watch the animals, learn some cool facts, and rest.
By the end of it, my mind drifted to that elementary-school question on which I'd been taught to wonder probably every time my lessons involved science in any degree: So this is creation, I thought. What does it reveal about God? What does it reveal about its Creator?
A common question, isn't it? I'm sure I've pondered it hundreds of times. How often I've stood before the ocean and marveled at the might of its Maker. How often I've stared at science-book pictures of the delicate intricacies of an eye, dumbfounded at the brilliance of its Designer. I've gazed at the mountains in the distance and imagined giant hands carving out their enormous slopes. I've scooped up snow in mittened hands and gawked at the microscopic perfection of the innumerable flakes on my fingers. We've got tiny ants and tinier amoebas—and planets and stars so gigantic and far away that the numbers surpass our ability to grasp them, even if we do talk about dumping golf balls all over the state of Texas.
Awe, I guess, is the theme here. I suppose awe is the theme every time I encounter creation and wonder at its Creator. It was the theme as I watched this show too. Repeatedly, I find creation to be magnificent. It is fantastically diverse, unbelievably full of perfect detail. It is bigger, grander, and wilder than my imagination of it, every time. All I can do is stare in awe of the God who created it. He seems so vast, so great, so far beyond me or us.
And then some flamingos form a parade, or a bird of paradise fluffs out its bright green neck feathers for a potential mate (after, of course, hiding all the green leaves from the spot so they don't steal from his brilliance). A fish leaps out of a stream, a lizard licks condensed water off its eye, a lion cub pounces on his mother's tail...and then I find myself amazed again. Somehow the great One, as distant as He is in His splendor, still meets us in His laughter. "Let's create a fish with a transparent forehead!" He chuckles. "How about the fluffy tail of the fox next? And—oh!—the neck of that giraffe can surely be stretched longer. Just wait 'til they see the smile of the two-toed sloth!"
It all made me smile too. But then I realized something. Yes, the show portrayed creation as beautiful. Yes, it was awe-inspiring, humorous, intricate, warm. But there were dark sides too. Snow leopards fought. Field mice were eaten. Birds got caught by the thorny seeds of a tree. Baby marine iguanas were snatched by snakes. Lions took bites out of buffaloes. Extreme weather affected them all. Creation is beautiful...but it is also violent—undeniably so. And then I wondered: What do we do with that? What does that say about the Creator?
The answer wasn't far behind the question: It says He's not afraid of death.
Ohhhh, great, I thought. Conclusions were far too easy to draw. That probably means He's not afraid of my death either...
I wasn't moving much in general that day, being dizzy and all, but I can assure you that I moved even less as I pondered this. I froze and wondered, What does it mean to surrender to a God who isn't afraid of my death—who isn't afraid of me getting shredded like that buffalo's hide? One doesn't need to apply much logic here. It means death, obviously. And has He not promised as much? Aren't we, after all, following His Son?
His Son... I sighed. It would seem easy to flinch away from this kind of God until we remember that. For this God, in His fearlessness of death, died Himself. He died on a blood-soaked cross, with nails in His hands and feet, thorns shoved into His brow, and a back ripped and bruised by the whip which struck and tore at Him thirty-nine times. His death was the most gruesome of all.
Pause and breathe, will you? We thought we could thrust our fists into the air and argue at the agony of the falling of sparrows. We thought we could protest the pain, the decay, the food chain. We thought we could convince Him of the injustice of the death in our own lives. But our fists drop, and our voices give out, as we look at the cross. This is the God who is not afraid of death. And we cannot accuse the One who has died Himself.
Not afraid of death, is He? But another look at His creation will show us why. The caught fish gives life to the bear. The bird buried by the tree's thorns gives life to all the plants which grow around its grave. Fungi make decay their food. And one giraffe, if ever killed, can feed a lion's entire pride. There's something, you see, about the way that this whole universe is wired that loudly defies the way we think about death. As odd as it seems, creation resounds with the melody of death repeatedly resulting in life. It's almost as if death just gets washed over. Real, yes. Painful, of course. But death's not the end.
We serve a God who doesn't fear death because He has, by His own death, written the ways of the universe such that death is not an enemy power but an exquisite potential. His was the most gruesome death—His also the most abundant life. Life doesn't stay in the grave. Life lives. And Life gives life to all who were once dead, that they also might live. And in this power, in this abundance, death itself is lost, washed over in the flow of a universe precisely wired to circle back to life every time.
As we look at creation in this way, I think we wind up in awe once again. And I think we realize that, as frightening as it is to think of surrendering—of choosing to follow the God who said His path is the cross—this is a path that will, most certainly, lead to life.
And suddenly we can join in with the God who doesn't fear death. We can join and sing, for Christ has been raised, and we will be too.
"...'Death is swallowed up in victory.' 'O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Cor.15:54c-57, ESV).
Amen. So let it be. Life has won.
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