Create Life

I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.

Do we do that? Or do we too often run from death instead of defying it. I wonder if we’re often afraid of the death we see around us and hope that somehow we’ll find paradise in the world somewhere else. We believe we’ll find it in another job, another wife or husband, or perhaps a vacation in the perfect place. We often find a piece of land that’s already green, plant crops on it until all the nutrients are gone and then look for another to do the same. But what if we could end the cycle of death, what if we could give rather than take? What if we could take a piece of desert and see it flourish; create life where only death was before? What if instead of running away from death, we had the power to create life because of Him who lives within us. Because we are created in the image of the creator of all life; we are created like God whom has created everything that posseses beauty in all of the universe. What if instead of taking life and beauty, we created life and beauty?

A few weeks ago during our practicum week, we were asked to complete some tasks for our school, G42, here in Spain. I’d been assigned to finish some computer work. And yet just a few hours after working, I just felt a deadness within my heart. Completing work inside my comfortable house just brought an utter feeling of death that I immediately hated! So although I feared of what would be required of me, I took the bus down to interact with some of the tougher people in Fuengirola. I ventured in to expose my self to the hurt and engage people that might not speak English or Spanish. Yet that challenge actually brought life to my heart. I’m made to go and bring order into the wilderness, bring life into the deadness, breath God’s healing into the hurting! And through that challenge, through that risk, I then see life flowing through me.

Isaiah 42:1 says, “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations.” Is it possible that instead of looking for paradise, we are to run to the nations; we are to run to the creation that’s eagerly awaiting restoration, eagerly awaiting the sons of God to be revealed? Is it possible that we are to return to restore the Pride Lands of Africa? Romans 8:15 says, “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”

This past weekend once again I was walking down the streets of Mijas. The sun was out, and once again the normally empty streets filled with residents peeking out their doors. Most of the people I saw had no smile. They were older and struggled to walk just a few blocks up and down the streets. They seemed to long for purpose, seemed to long for a reason to exist anymore. And honestly, I wanted to run; I wanted to just get away. I don’t want to think of the inevitable – that I too may end up the same way. Is it really hopeless; am I really trapped to this end; is death really an all-powerful reality?

If this really is the end, I want nothing to do with this life. If my life’s pursuits simply end up in death, why try? Why make any effort to produce life if that life will shortly die anyway? I have no desire to take and store up all I can in this life to that end. I can have the most amazing career, the most amazing wife … but if it’s just an experience that will soon end, don’t I become destructive?

If I give into fear of death, if I believe that death ultimately reigns, then I’m tempted to graze, tempted to take something new and innocent, tempted to destroy and take life from the next new person or place. When there’s no hope of restoration, I become destructive. Is that possibly where rape, hate, killing comes from – a heart that is overcome with despair, that is desperate to take life because it believes there’s no hope for eternal restoration? Yet is it possible that instead of waiting around for something new, we get to be a part of that restoration of eternal life even today? Is it possible that we actually get to be part of an eternal restoration? Why does my heart long for something so amazing? Is there a reason that we have an understanding of microbiology that the world has never seen? Do we really think the computer or the internet was our idea? Or is it perhaps God’s mind, his creativity is even right now flowing through his image-bearers for a purpose we don’t yet see? I hate the idea that we develop new drugs just to extend a person’s life just a little longer. Why does ethical* stem cell research that shows promise of completely restoring damaged hearts, why does growing new skin in a laboratory hit a huge desire deep within my spirit? We’re finding ways to restimulate cell growth in tendons in animals where it was often thought that certain damage was almost permanent! Is our creator orchestrating something bigger than we ever imagined – “See I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.“

I’m tired of feeling helpless in a world of death. I’m tired of feeling like only a few people get to experience a fake shadow of life for a short period of life in ignorance of the world of reality all around. I’m tired of feeling that death has overcome us and we can do nothing about it! We were meant to create life in the world around us. We were meant to be the bud that blossoms in the desert. The rose that brings life in the middle of death and decay, that stares death in the face and triumphs.