A FAITHFUL CREATOR
A FAITHFUL CREATORBy A.P.Adams
We are God's workmanship. We are God's husbandry, God's building, clay in the hands of the potter, that is, so far as the final accomplishment of the purpose of God is concerned. "I am the first, and I am the last", saith the Lord, and all this is the creative process. If Christians could only see this, they would never think of such a thing as making man's perfection depend on himself, for surely in His creative work God needs no assistance. If man's salvation is a new creation the consummation of which is life, then surely it must be all of God, and every son and daughter of the race may rest assured that God's purpose in them individually will be ultimately accomplished. I, as God's offspring, (Acts 17:28 compared with Psa. 82:6) may be absolutely sure that my Father and my Creator will sometime bring me into harmony with Himself. For it is impossible to believe that any portion of His creation will be out of harmony or at variance with Him through all eternity. Especially so since He plainly declares that he will ultimately "reconcile all things to Himself".
I take it that God has a definite purpose in the creation of everything — a definite end in view — and that end is certain to be reached soon or later. In other words, every creature ultimately fulfills the purpose of the Creator in its creation. For us to suppose otherwise would be to suppose a failure on the part of the Creator, which is unthinkable. The believer's attitude toward God then might be thus expressed: God has created me for a definite purpose. That purpose I shall ultimately fulfill in His economy. It is a wise and good purpose, one with which I should be perfectly satisfied and contented if I only understood it all. Toward that end I am continually moving. All things tend to advance me in that one direction, and I shall surely arrive. I shall surely fulfill the purpose of my creation, and all I have to do is to leave myself in His hands as clay in the hands of the potter to be fashioned according to His will.
It is a great satisfaction and pleasure to think of our relationship to God in this light. For God has something in His mind to make of me, and I shall surely become that something. And furthermore, since God is wise and good, that something will please and satisfy me perfectly. When I reach the place for which God created me, and for which He has fitted me, then I shall have no regrets that it is not another place. But I shall realize that it is my place and shall be satisfied, perfectly satisfied with the accomplishment of the ever blessed and good will of God in me.
I am a seed, destined to a certain result ultimately. The seed may pass through many vicissitudes in reaching that result, like the seed in the hand of an Egyptian mummy lying dormant for a thousand years, but still its end is fixed, and that end it will reach, and none other. I may frustrate the grace of God, as in Gal. 2:21, but I cannot frustrate. His will. He may say, "Let him alone; he is joined to his idol", but "He will not cast off forever". Sooner or later He will return, and have compassion, and cast all our sins behind our backs". Again, "He turneth man to destruction and saith, Return ye children of men". I may be disappointed many times in failing to be what I would like to be, and what I imagine I might have been, and so my experience will correspond to the poet's words — "Of all sad words by tongue or pen, The saddest are these — it might have been." And this experience is a part of my training, and by it I am continually being advanced toward what in the providence of God I am to be. And thus —
"Our place is kept, and it will wait,Ready for us to fill it, soon or late:No star is ever lost we once have seen;We always may be what we might have been:Since good, though only thought, has life and breath.And evil in its nature is decay,And any hour may blot it all away."
Let no one say, "This is fatalism". Nay, it is godism — if I may reverently use such an expression. None need fear a fatalism that makes God supreme, absolute, almighty. In the foregoing remarks I am dealing with finalities. God is the first and the last and he has His way ultimately. He is able to subdue — that is, to harmonize — all things unto Himself. Himself is love, and love has only one way of subduing — by harmonizing. This glorious consummation will be reached when all are gathered together in one (Eph. 1:10) and God is all in all.
Thus may the trusting child "rest in God" both for himself and for the "whole creation", and with the utmost confidence he may commit all his interests unto Him as unto a faithful creator.
A.P. Adams (1845 - 1920)
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