“The Mighty One, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.”
Does God ever tire of summoning the sun? Not according to G.K. Chesterton, the brilliant thinker, writer, and apologist. In Orthodoxy, Chesterton provides an account of his own growth in spiritual certainty. He writes:
“If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, ‘For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity,’ I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence.”
To make a case for purpose in the universe, Chesterton looks to the monotonous and mundane.
All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact.
Stay with this, Chesterton is going somewhere. So am I.
The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike, it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but he has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
Chesterton's musings took him above the realm of the daily to the heavenly. In his words, "that the world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller."
Life is a story. God is the story-teller. He is the flannel-graph artist who places the sun in the sky, the green in the grass, and the orange in the daisies. He exults in monotony, but he is not bored. What's more, He knows your name. And he no more tires of you than he does the creation he robes in splendor or paints in brilliant hues.
And if God never tires of you, he never tires of hearing your cares, your challenges, and your needs. So take them to him today.
Notes:
- "If I am asked . . ." from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert Keith Chesterton. New York: Doubleday. 1908. Page 143.
- "The man who with utmost daring . . ." from Orthodoxy, page 11.
- "All the towering materialism . . ." from Orthodoxy, page 60.
- "That the world of ours has some purpose . . ." from Orthodoxy, p. 61.