Destroyers

We create but we are not creators. We manipulate what exists but we do not create from nothing. God spoke this into existence but I only whistle a faint echo of God’s tunes.

The other day a man ran a tractor in my parents’ yard. He created a new yard for them. He created the foundation for the new lawn rather. But he didn’t create it. He may have said something to my mother when he finished, like, hey, I have finished creating a new yard for you. But he didn’t make something from nothing.

A man who did not believe in God said angrily to the believer, hey, I could make a better universe than YOUR god! The debater answered calmly, saying, well, don’t worry about the universe thing, but if you wouldn’t mind, could you please make a rabbit just to establish credibility.

I have never created a rabbit. But I have tried. I tried to make a rabbit out of my messed up relationships many times. I couldn’t even manage the creation of faithfulness in my heart.

When I hear music I am amazed. I hear music in everything. The clink of plates in a sink, the screech of trains grinding around bends in the city tracks. I am amazed that something is happening with a vibration that is captured in the mechanism of an organism of my body and then interpreted by my brain to mean something, whether soothing or mean or annoying doesn’t matter. I cannot create music.

Then I wonder about people who destroy. The postage stamp monsters of evil empire. I think, I definitely relate to this more than the creator. But neither am I a destroyer, though I definitely feel more like this than the other. No matter how much fire I raise I can’t annihilate it. I tear it down and stomp it and run it over with my anger and though broken it remains. Maybe this is why breaking things is so much worse because they stick around broken. To destroy would be better. To annihilate. But we cannot.

What does it mean that God spoke the world into existence? He didn’t mold the clay, he spoke it. He said the world in a word. God said let there be… and there was. And it was good.