If you’re doing the work that’s given you for the glory of God your work is just as important as the Prime Minister’s. And it ought to be a consolation to those of us whom ill-health has knocked out of life’s battle altogether, so that God seems to have no work for us to do except to lie still and suffer; their work is still as important as anybody else’s, if they will devote their sufferings to God’s glory.
Why did God create you? For his own glory. I expect you think that sounds very selfish of him. But, you see, there isn’t any higher motive for which anything can be done, and in the long run there isn’t any other reason for which anything can happen than the greater glory of Almighty God. He couldn’t create you for the sake of any other created things, because all other created things only existed for his glory. He couldn’t create you for your own sake, because, you see, there wasn’t any you. For his own glory—not that his eternal Blessedness could be increased in any way by the existence of any created thing. Your existence, if you don’t mind my saying so, isn’t in the least necessary. No, as the artist loves to create beautiful things, so God, whose goodness loves to diffuse itself everywhere, created you, for himself.
How did God create you? In his own image. God is a Spirit; and man, alone among the material creation, is a spirit—can make himself, as well as the world around him, the object of his own thought. God loves the whole of creation as the artist loves his own work. But God loves you as a father loves his child; what he loves in you is his own image as he sees it in you. Even when, by the Fall, we had declared war on God, made ourselves his enemies, he still loves his own image in us, marred as it was and made hideous by our sins. He allowed his own Son to pay the ransom due to his eternal justice, rather than let man, the masterpiece of his creation, fall short of his immortal destiny. In his own image he made you and remade you.
Who created you? Almighty God. Out of what? Out of nothing. Why? For his own glory. How? In his own image. Let us see what guidance that gives as to the life we ought to live, what light it throws upon our lives as we actually live them.
God made you—what gratitude from you will ever be adequate recognition of that? Of course, you may be the kind of person who never feels grateful about anything; there are people like that. If that’s so, I can only say I’m glad that you’re there and I’m at Aberdeen. But if you have ever felt gratitude in your life, then you owe it all to God. If he had done nothing else for us, the mere fact that he gave us life alone makes any sort of happiness or any sort of gratitude possible for us. If ever you have felt, in the contemplation of a sunset or any perfect work of nature or art, in the sense of speed or of your own bodily activity, in the thrill of good news or in the passion of first love, that it was really worth while being alive—then that moment was a revelation to you, if you had the heart to understand, of what you owe to Almighty God for having created you.
And he created you out of nothing—that’s rather a come-down, isn’t it? People in America lately seem to have been very much exercised about whether men came from monkeys or not. But it’s worse than that, because, after all, a monkey is something; but we come from nothing at all! I wish we remembered that oftener. Because, after all, half the trouble in the world comes from people standing on their dignity, doesn’t it? Those people with a grievance, who are always feeling insulted because promotion seems to pass them by, and their kindnesses are not properly appreciated and their work goes unrecognized—how much better it would be if they remembered that they are nothing! Those people who like to be thought men of the world, or women of fashion, and go about all their lives in fear of saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing, something which isn’t quite good form—how much happier they would be if they remembered that they are nothing! Those self-important people who go round giving good advice where it’s not needed, and always think that everything is going to the dogs unless they happen to be managing it themselves—why can’t somebody tell them they’re nothing? I wish some of them were listening now; then I should be able to tell them.
God created you for his own glory. That ought to be very consoling to some of us. Some of us, I mean, aren’t doing anything very important in life and aren’t ever likely to; just adding up figures at a desk or sweeping floors—it doesn’t make any difference. If you’re doing the work that’s given you for the glory of God your work is just as important as the Prime Minister’s. And it ought to be a consolation to those of us whom ill-health has knocked out of life’s battle altogether, so that God seems to have no work for us to do except to lie still and suffer; their work is still as important as anybody else’s, if they will devote their sufferings to God’s glory. But for some of us it’s a rather discouraging reflection—God’s glory? Do I think of that ever, from one year’s end to another? Do I really think about anything except my own comfort and the comfort of the people immediately round me? Believe me, that’s the only reason why people feel bored and “fed up,” and even weary of life itself—they are trying to live for themselves instead of living for the glory of God. That’s why suicide is wrong, you know; we talk about a suicide taking his own life, but he doesn’t really take his own life. He takes a life that belongs to Almighty God.
God created you in his own image. Man is always a creator, because it was in the image of his Creator that he was made. See how children are everlastingly wanting to play with bricks or make mud pies or draw on the window-pane—man’s instinct is to create. That’s why a City clerk often thinks less of the work he does all day than of the hour he puts in at the end of the day, trying to grow nasturtiums in a garden sixteen feet by twelve—it is man’s instinct to create. And there is one splendid opportunity Almighty God has given you for exercising this artistic faculty of yours. He has given you an immortal soul, with a character which your own actions, your own voluntary actions, are to mould according to his pattern, bearing the seal of his approval, if it is well done, to all eternity. It is not easy; there would be no joy in art if the artist were not struggling with the limitations imposed on him by his materials. It means conforming to laws; no art has any meaning unless it conforms to laws. But it is your task, and your unique opportunity. Man alone among the creatures has been dignified with a free will and a choice of destinies, that he might be God’s fellow-artist, that he might co-operate with his Creator in moulding for himself a destiny which is eternal.
_________
This essay is a chapter from University and Various Sermons. Republished with gracious permission from Cluny Media.
Imaginative Conservative readers may use the code IMCON15 to receive 15% off any order of not-already discounted books from Cluny Media.
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is “Harnham Gate, Salisbury” (between 1820 and 1821), by John Constable, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
