How Things Serve the Creator

Psalm 119

89 Forever, O LORD,
Your word is settled in heaven.
90 Your faithfulness continues throughout all generations;
You established the earth, and it stands.
91 They stand this day according to Your ordinances,
For all things are Your servants.

Verse 91 in Psalm 119 is rendered in New International Version as “All things serve you.”

Isn’t this a mind-boggling thought? It is a real paradox, if you think about it. If all things indeed serve God who created all things, then how can the writer claim all things serve God when there are people who do not even recognize His existence?

Ah, but that is where we miss the whole point of God’s creation.

Consider light as a medium that preserves and enhances life – like air which sustains life. Ever since Einstein gave us a glimpse of its inscrutable nature, scientists have been able to harness even its many previously unappreciated properties to make life more advanced and convenient. We now have photovoltaic energy and laser technology applied in many of our modern tools and appliances.

Even as a medium of art, like in photography, light provides the essential or foundational material. And yet this art form owes its existence not merely to light as a physical reality but also to the entire structure – network or web, if you please – of the entire Universe. By that we mean the eyes that would have to be present to catch the light, the nerves that connect the eyes to the brain, the vessels that would have to carry blood to preserve the eye in its functional condition, the skull that would protect the brain…. Well, simply said, the whole body that contains and sustains the eyes.

And we have not even mentioned the exact mixture of air in the atmosphere that will not only allow the body to survive in a livable sphere but also the entire solar system that allows our planet to exist as it does and to have the right properties and ingredients to maintain a perfectly balanced and precisely interactive sets of cosmological, physical, chemical, geological and biological systems.

Were we not talking about photography -- perhaps, one of the most ordinary, if not the most taken-for-granted, of human activities? Ideally speaking, art serves to ennoble the human soul; although photography now bears the distinction of being a tool for propagating immorality and depravity. What we initially defined as a beneficiary of the beauty and purity of light as a created and creative tool now serves the dark motives of humans. Created, for we read somewhere and accept in our hearts the truth that a God once spoke the words, “Let there be light!” And there was….

Whoa, why is there is so much darkness today? Darkness, figuratively speaking, does not serve the purposes of God. It runs against His basic nature. “God is light; in Him there is no darkness.” He created the Universe to obey His laws. And in all of His creation, only humans choose to disobey. Or disbelieve.

The tiny atoms that form a single pixel that helps to produce a high-resolution photo of your cat, your dog or your best friend, owe their existence to the powerful Being who called light into being. Those tiny atoms may also serve God’s purpose of bringing into His realm a lost person by the might of the written word.

And His Word will not return to Him void or without effect. For if God has the power to do such magnificent things, do we think He doesn’t have the right to delete anything that does not serve His purposes? Good if He chooses to merely delete. What if He decided to burn a piece of paper to light up the darkness?

(Photo above shows a sculpture entitled "The Photographer", done in kamagong by Carlitos Ortega of San Pablo, Laguna.)