“Reading the book of creation isn’t a matter of breaking a code that leads us to a myriad of facile equations: a hedgehog means x, a dandelion means y, a seahorse means z. Reading creation isn’t like looking up a word in the dictionary. It’s more like returning again and again to pore over a favorite poem by a favorite poet, and always discovering more to savor. For a dictionary, you just need to know the alphabet. For the poem, you need wisdom, a willingness to linger, imagination, and love.
“And holy curiosity. I love the open-endedness of a line in Psalm 8 that refers vaguely to ‘whatever passes along the paths of the seas’—as if to say, I know there’s more to creation than we yet see; and Lord only knows what we’ll find in Australia. ‘It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings to search things out’ (Proberbs 25:2)
“So let’s try a little creation reading, with something simple, like bread.
“The Jewish physicist Gerald L. Schroeder likes to ask his students what it takes to make bread. Their first answers center on the ingredients, which couldn’t be simpler: water, flour, yeast. But there’s a lot more—more of creation—that goes into a loaf. You need soil and a favorable climate. You need ‘extraterrestrial input’ in the form of sunlight. You need a being who wants bread in the first place and who can concoct a recipe, and who has the savvy to reshape create matter into an oven. That rules out wallabies and wildebeests and the like. This endeavor will require human beings. ‘To make a loaf of bread you need a very special universe’ (Gerald Schroeder).
“…Bread says: The stuff of the world has a future; it will be transfigured, glorified, renewed….
“…Does that seem like more weight than a loaf of bread can bear? On the night He gave Himself up for the life of the world, Jesus went even further. He took bread in His hands, gave thanks, and said, ‘This is my body.’”
(from Why We Create, pp. 21-23)
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