This was evoked by the music video below. The images go quite well with the story!

It was a huge sizzling mess at first, but it spread out gradually and started to cool in places. I had no idea what the Master was up to, but he told me to wait and see, that he was working on something extra special and that it would all be ready in good time. So I waited and saw that what seemed flat, was actually growing in several directions at once, and that the Master was adding the directions as the creation was growing. Fascinating.

At last I could see there were some fairly complicated developments. The original material had now become more complex and developed into several different kinds, that the Master was starting to use in different combinations, every time adding to the variety of materials. It seemed like he was not exactly creating an artwork like many times before, but first creating the materials that he was going to use in the artwork later on.

A group of my fellows had now also become interested in the latest creation. We assembled in a small group to watch. Some of them were already cheering. I could see why, but I am not so easily moved to express my admiration, interesting as this work was.

Now the Master was starting with what I would call the proper artwork. Some of the initial material combined very strikingly with the more complicated ones, and the Master used these compounds to create very small, detailed forms stretching out in long strings. Then he began combining these with others. He worked in close detail, because the Master is brilliant on both the large and the small scale. It was pretty, and a nice contrast to the vast expanses of the first phases.

Then the Master smiled and I saw something really original. The Master had combined the strings in a way so they could start to move! This was a first. Some of my fellows gasped, but then started cheering. They even began improvising a kind of song to tell of what the Master had done. It was good!

I thought that the Master would have stopped here, but he carried on even further. He began combining the moving sections into larger and larger organisms. Now his spectacular creativity really showed itself. I must admit even I was moved to overwhelming admiration several times. My friends’ improvised song had become something more solemn and majestic, and the group had grown as more and more of our fellows joined and started singing, moved with sincere admiration.

Now the Master looked very pleased. It was done now, I thought. But it was really only time for the master stroke. In the quickening mass I saw, first vaguely, but then very clearly, the image of the Master himself. It was like his signature, a way of putting himself into the creation, making it holy, marking it as his own. This would never have occurred to any of us: the vast triumphal song, which is what it had now become, sung by a million million voices as one, reached a great crescendo as we saw it. The Master was very pleased indeed. He looked and saw that it was good, and so did we. I filled my lungs and added my voice, and we sang and sang and sang.

I saw Him in the shining of the the stars,

I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,

But in His ways with men I found him not.

Tennyson

1.

I don’t know why the stars and images of space touch me so much. Maybe because as a child you vaguely believe heaven is in the sky, so that must be where God will come from. Then growing up I learned about the immensity of space: the God who created all of this must be truly, truly awesome. Another image was of people looking down into a shallow pool by the sea, how by just blocking the sun with one hand makes it night for the little creatures swimming in the water. But we are those creatures: my idea of them looking up and seeing something truly huge very high above them also informs my idea of the glory of God.

This is partly why I’ve dreamed so long of going to hike under the Northern Lights. I’ve arranged to go hike on a mountain under the stars later this year because of this too. But this is a very impersonal God, very powerful but also very distant.

2.

In working with people. You will know how people are somehow precious and important, I mean it is worth going out of your way for them. But God works incredibly in this field. I like to listen to testimonies for this reason, to hear how people realize their own sinfulness, and how they experience God as good. One friend sat in a passenger liner going round the coast of Mozambique, when suddenly something overwhelming happened inside her and she became “changed” in a way she could not understand. She was not in the church or looking for anything like religion, so she had no idea of explaining what had happened, but she began to read the Bible and recently got all the way through. She is still at it: God had just reached down and touched her heart in a way that neither music nor people nor any other thing could. Another friend had been a very self-righteous homosexual; then God reached out and touched his heart and he also became changed: that was early 2002 and to this day he is happily married and is the father of a beautiful daughter, and a leader in the church. I’m sure he is not perfect, but he is so far from where he would have been that it is nothing short of miraculous. Talking to them they all know the same God that I do, a good, loving, patient, compassionate Father.

3.

I can praise God also for how he has worked in my environment. He has brought the right thing and the right people at the right time. As an example, just before you and I began Bible sharing I sent a message about how someone I knew was leaving, and how upset I was about it. We had recently read Luke 8, about Jesus calming the storm and how afterward he kind of scolded the disciples: “Where is your faith?” Then shortly after he provided a whole family in Christ, in a sense. He was bringing the right people at the right time. Also, the right thing: I had to spend an extra year at university to meet a friend to come to Taiwan. I really hated it at the time, but I would do it over again to discover that there is a life like this and a country like this. God really is in control and he is busy arranging the next 20 years of your life while you are just planning until the end of the month.