Tis
thee, abstractly thee, God of uncreated Beauty, that I love, in thee my wishes
are all terminated; in thee, as in their blissful centre, all my desires meet .
. . The God of nature, and the original of all beauty, is my God.
Reformed, Celtic, and Benedictine traditions have
historically emphasized that the praise of God's beauty is the chief end of
creation. Each of these traditions have,
in their own way, emphasized that the attempt to understand God – insufficient
as that may be – begins and ends with praise.
It begins and ends with doxology – which is derived from the Greek
"doxa" (meaning "glory") and "logia" (meaning
"saying") – a glory saying.
All flows from an understanding of God's astounding beauty. As Belden Lane puts it, "Everything else
flows from this. Action for social
justice, for example, is simply the form that praise must assume in the
marketplace and other corridors of power."
The Reformer John Calvin wrote that "the stability of
the world depends on the rejoicing of God in his works." God sustains the world by rejoicing in the
world. Lane suggests that "The role
of human beings is to lead the rest of creation in praising the one for whom
they all yearn, yet know they cannot possess. . . . The Psalmist urges
believers to contribute to the rejoicing that maintains the universe, Calvin
said, 'because the end for which we are created is that the divine name may be
celebrated by us on earth.'" Calvin
wrote that "If on earth such praise of God does not come to pass . . .
then the whole order of nature will be thrown into confusion and creation will
be annihilated." And yet, it is
God's rejoicing in creation that makes possible and elicits from us our own
rejoicing in God.
So let us
celebrate! Let us praise God! In this Season of Advent we celebrate
God's continuing creation of the world, we celebrate God's participation in the
world in the one born in a manger, we celebrate that the Spirit of the Lord
upholds us and every part of creation.
Joy to the world, the
Savior reigns; let earth her songs employ; let fields and floods, rocks, hills,
and plains, repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat, repeat
the sounding joy!
[1]
Quoted in Belden C. Lane, Ravished by
Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality. Oxford University Press, 2011, 17.
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