By default, we tend to see the world around us as unfathered. We live our waking days in the dreamland of God’s absence. And that’s hard on us, isn’t it? It’s hard to live with a lie. It’s hard to walk through life as if God hasn’t fathered-forth the beauty around us—because he has. I talk about the great lie from the serpent in a book that encourages us to embrace the truth of God’s presence.
One of my favorite poems (from one of my favorite poets) is “Pied Beauty” by Gerald Manley Hopkins.
Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Look at that last line: “He fathers-forth . . .” It’s a beautiful expression. The skies, the brinded cows, the moles and trout, the finches, and fallowed fields—all of these things are “fathered-forth.”
God’s holiness is always wrapped up in his fatherly care—a mysterious love that goes before us and beyond us.
This brings a whole new perspective to that initial sentence from the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name” (Matt. 6:9). Why hallowed? Because his fatherly hand touches everything. Because he fathers-forth the entire universe without being seen. Because his wildly creative and loving care is imprinted on mussel shells and magpie nests. God’s holiness is always wrapped up in his fatherly care—a mysterious love that goes before us and beyond us.
A Fathered Place
Recently, the same wording came up in a passage I read from Tim Chester (Enjoying God). “We live in a fathered world,” he wrote.
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