He Holds Us Into Being!

Good morning, Loved Ones! I call you “Loved Ones” because I know our beautiful Father in heaven loves you, and I love you for sticking with me and reading this blog! Thank you!

I am sorry it has been so long since I have posted. I have been writing like crazy, and have written several blog posts since Thanksgiving, but the Lord has cautioned me against each one of them, so I didn’t post. Finally, I stopped and prayed, asking God what was wrong. I heard a phrase in answer and remembered that I have other writing that I do, writing he has asked me to finish, and I haven’t been doing that.

So I paused all attempts to publish here, and have been working on that piece for the last week. I am nearly finished, and only wanted to pop on here to say “hello,” and to share a wonderful piece of insight the Lord encouraged me with in the last couple of days.

When I was younger, I tended to criticize my own efforts into non-existence. It was the old sand-bag at the finish trick! I would work for a long time–sometimes tedious work–feeling very much like God wanted me to do it, but when I was just about ready to give it to someone, publish or whatever, ship, I would see all the flaws in it. I would see ONLY the flaws in it.

I still go through this, and have realized that is why people need to create in a loving community. We need others to give us clear-eyed reactions, delivered with love. And in our own hearts, we have to be ready and willing to accept those opinions, in love, as good information.

Sometimes the critique of others has lead to some amazing insights and revisions. “The Courage to Move” received at least two in-depth critiques from my friend, Ashley, who is an amazingly careful reader, and I praise God she helped me! And I praise God for the inspiration, and everything else. It truly is His story.

And Jim helped me finish that story with his loving encouragement!

Anyway, you can see I have this problem of finishing, due to my own self-criticism. Some might call it being careful to put out only one’s best work, or “attention to detail,” or any number of flattering things, but let’s call it what it is, folks. It’s PRIDE.

And pride is a sin. Which I am rooting out and destroying as fast as I recognize its shape-shifting, hydra head! Ahem!

So the cure to pride, at least to me, is the same remedy as the cure for lying: Confession and the humiliation that follows.

(I am taking a dose today, in that the photos in this post are not my best, and yet, I am posting them. I couldn’t transfer the better photos off of my “miracle” camera in timely fashion, so these are what I got on the phone. I am sorry, and I will post better ones of the sky from the past few weeks, soon! Have you been noticing how beautiful the skies are lately, in between the blankets of clouds?? I sure have!)

Julia Cameron, author of “The Artist’s Way,” said, “I will take care of the quantity, and let God take care of the QUALITY.” In other words, when we submit to God, he gives us inspiration. And he wants us to share what we have been given. (Luke 3:11)

Our own relentless self-criticism kills his beautiful gift, and it’s death from a thousand cuts, as surely as Julius Caesar was stabbed once by each senator on that fateful day in Rome. When he looked up at his best friend, Brutus, and said, “Et Tu, Brute?” or “Also you, Brutus?” Betrayal from inside the circle. It is like the artist or writer, saying to the mirror, “It feels like the whole world hates what I made, and now you do, too?”

What creative work could live through that? None. For what doesn’t die from the literal cuts would surely die from heartbreak.

But this is all to tell you what God showed me this week. We have been trying to lighten up our household in preparation for the New Year. In so doing, we have been pulling out old artwork from years past, and old photos that were stored upstairs, and lots of other memory-tugging objects.

As we were going through all this, I was thinking about what it’s like to be a parent, and to save your child’s artwork. (Yes, I found some finger paintings Beau did when he was a toddler!) At the time, I was so thrilled that my baby was painting, and I wanted to keep every little thing he does. You may find these tributes on the refrigerators of young parents and doting grandparents almost anywhere, so I know I am not alone in this!

But, it’s just not practical to keep everything. The comedian, Stephen Wright, had a line from long ago: “You can’t have everything–where would you put it?”

And so I let Beau decide, especially about his drawings, what he wants to keep and what he doesn’t. He is an adult now, of course, but I meant when he was young, I let him decide. And he kept virtually everything, not because he is sentimental, but because he was too busy drawing to sort anything he did yesterday, last week, last month. . .

And as I was sorting, this thought hit me like a thunderbolt: God keeps everything we have ever done.

Here is how I got to that understanding. John 1 tells us that the Father, through Jesus (The “Word”), created everything that exists.

“In the beginning, was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” John 1:1-3

Colossians 1: 16-17 says the same thing, but takes it a step further:

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.“

So not only did God, through Jesus, create everything that exists, but he continues to hold them in existence! The apostle Paul spoke to the Athenians about the “Unknown God” to which they had made an altar, he said (my paraphrase) “I know him, and I can tell you about him!” Then he said this,

“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, and dwells not in temples made with human hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he gives to all life, and breath, and all things. . .for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.‘ ” Acts 17: 24,25,28, 29

Hebrews 1:3 says that Jesus “upholds all things by the word of his power.“

So God, though Jesus, made everything that exists, all of it, including you and me. He is our Father and we are his children, and “by him all things consist.” He “upholds all things by the word of his power.” Present tense!

These passages used to confuse me as to how that could be true in the physical world. After all, doesn’t it all just keep on turning no matter what we do? What could God have to do with all that?

But then, I read this about the atom: Inside the atom, two forces were discovered. One is called the “weak force,” which continually tries to break the atom apart. The other force is called the “strong force,” which continually holds it together.

There’s another piece to all this, so bear with me while I try to explain (in lay terms) what I don’t fully understand: Scientists for the last hundred years or so, tried to figure out from where the main forces in our world originate inside the atom (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong and weak nuclear force). They have been able, now, to do just that, to understand how elements of the atom correspond to, or possibly are the origin for, the individual forces.

The “force particles” as they call them are the “photon” for electromagnetism, “the W and Z particles” for the weak nuclear force, and the “gluons” for the strong nuclear force. I will quote from the Nobel Prize site: “. . .the gluons lead to a confining force between quarks. This is in fact due to the asymptotic freedom, which can be interpreted to say that the coupling strength increases with lower energy, which quantum mechanically also means that it increases with distance. In fact, this increase is like the one for a spring. . . .” (last paragraph under the heading, “The standard model”, found here.)

It’s OK if you just skimmed that. So here is a table to help visualize:

Force Particles (parts of the atom)

photon = electromagnetism

W and Z Particles = weak nuclear force

gluons = strong nuclear force

“Asymptotic freedom” is the concept of increasing attraction due to increasing distance. Not really, but that’s how I can explain it. In other words, it works like a spring! The energy you put into pulling it apart gives it even more strength to snap back.

Picture an old screen door on the porch: If you were out late, and want to enter silently, you open it just a little and slip in; but if you just got home from the service on Christmas break, and you want to wake up the house, you pull it wide and it will “SLAM!” shut behind you. “Yay! I’m home!” The wider you open it, the harder is slams shut behind you.

Thank you for sticking with me through all of this! I know it’s hard to visualize this stuff, but here is the point:

God’s will, by the Word of his power, holds all of us and this entire world into being. This is evidenced in the physical world by the “strong nuclear force.” And the kicker is that the harder the “weak nuclear force” tries to pull apart (destroy) the atom, the exponentially stronger the strong force binds it (holds it in being)!

Now, back to the insight about our little artistic projects and sorting the junk from the keepers in our house: All the things that we make in this world, whether we are little children building with wooden blocks, an artist putting marks on paper, or a machinist forcing steel through a press, all the physical things we make continue to exist unless 1) we take them apart or 2) they disintegrate through natural forces like rot and rust. God holds them in existence the same way he holds everything else in existence.

It makes no difference, on a physical level, whether a painting was made by me or Picasso. It will exist, subject to time, as long as it will, unless something destroys it. God lets ridiculous things exist along with sublime things, and actively holds them all into being, because his will upholds our will. His will gives our will its power, because he holds us up and empowers us.

Now if God, in all his amazing glory, loves us so much that he created a world where all our little creations would remain in being by “the word of his power,” then why on earth are we so self critical?And how dare we cruelly criticize each other (remembering that our loving Father is watching how we treat each other)?

We are not better judges of worth than God is. He is the Judge of the World, and one day, he will make decisions about it and get rid of what needs to be destroyed. But for now, he gives us time to live and to grow and to learn from our mistakes.

(And it’s OK for us to make the choice to get rid of things that are no longer needed, too! Of course!)

But he loves us that much! And he wants us commands us to love and support each other, using the power that flows from him!

We love you! Have a wonderful day!