A Framework for Faith/Spiritual Vision

Often the Lord sprinkles down the waters bound in the clouds/lest, the fastenings being broken, they all at once burst forth./Streams of this water always, never failing, flow/in more fruitful channels, as if from breasts,/slowly through the regions of the earth,/cold and hot at different times.

  - Columba, Altus Prosator (Irish, 6th century)

You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills; they give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

  - Psalm 104.10, 11

Both Columba and the psalmist were writing poetry, so we might be tempted to think that their language is just a kind of fanciful spiritual way of describing "natural" processes.

But I don't think so. In fact, I don't think there's any such thing as "nature." "Nature," as used in a Kantian or secular context, refers to pre-existing matter, in one form or another, that awaits discovery, taxonomizing, and use by men before it has any meaning. Nothing in the world is like that.

The world is not "nature" - unnamed, purposeless stuff. The world is creation, and God is its Creator, as well as its Sovereign. I'll even go so far as to say that there are no such things as laws of "nature." What we conveniently refer to as "laws" - when water boils, how magnetism works, the force of gravity, chemical formulas, all that - are really just descriptions of processes that regularly occur. No "law" insists that they work this way. They work this way because of the "immediate influence" of God on all created things.

Here I borrow a comment from Jonathan Edwards, who believed as I do: "It is by the immediate influence of God upon things according to those constant methods which we call the laws of nature, that they are ever obedient to man's will, or that he can use them at all."

God exerts continuous, intimate, detailed, and comprehensive "influence" on all created things, which hold together because of His Word and perform His bidding as His servants for our good (Ps. 119.89-91; Eph. 1.22, 23). The cosmos, in other words, is not "automatic." It is not ruled by "laws." It is not impersonal and without purpose.

The cosmos is ruled by God, and the constancy, consistency, predictability, reliability, and certainty of His "immediate influence" upon His creation is but a testimony to His steadfast love and faithfulness toward us.

He Who holds each drop of rain together and guides it to its appointed destination has given us precious and very great promises in Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 1.4; 2 Cor. 1.20). We can count on those promises as surely as we count on the rain that falls, the water that flows, the waves and photons of light leaping off your computer screen to your eyes, and the next breath you take.

The immediate influence of God on all created things should tell us, at every moment, that He will never fail us nor forsake us.

Perhaps you'll remember to thank Him for that a time or two today.

T. M. Moore, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.