Declaring the Glory of God

Once, I found myself with a spare half hour in Bellingham, Washington. The March weather was cold and gray. Pearly drops of rainwater fell onto my cheeks as I parked my rental car and began to walk toward Henderson Books, a used bookstore recommended by a friend.

I pushed the door open to the sound of a little bell. The shop greeted me with warmth and bright light. The air smelled dry and faintly sweet, like old paper and dust. Packed rows of wooden bookshelves extended far back into the store.

With a long drive ahead of me and only twenty or thirty minutes to peruse the shop, I decided to focus my search within the poetry section. I crossed the store. The bookshelves began to feel endless. Row upon row of them stretched on, and when I found it the poetry section was no different—it towered over me and extended some fifty feet into the back of the store. Every shelf was packed to the brim.

I paused for a moment, overwhelmed. How could I ever hope to scan through so many books in just twenty minutes?

As I stared at all those books and tried to come up with a workable game plan, I realized my overwhelm had a second, deeper source. I was in Washington for a week of writing courses. I hoped my study would help me improve my craft so I could one day write and publish collections of poetry and essays, books I hope people will read but which, as I stared down this gargantuan poetry section, I realized might be doomed to live out their days nestled within the overstuffed shelves of a used bookstore’s poetry section.

I’ve long made peace with the likelihood that only a few people will purchase and read my work—but how would anyone ever find my books in a store like this one? What if no one ever does? What if my work is lost in the centuries’ worth of poetry we’re all too busy and phone-distracted to read? If that is a potential destiny for my work, is my own writing still a practice worth doing?

I stared at all those books and contended with a sudden twinge of temptation to give up my creative practice. But then I was reminded of Psalm 19. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” the Psalm reads. “And the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard . . .”

Anyone who has stargazed in a dark sky zone knows that the language in this Psalm is either grossly understated or, like all language, simply incapable of describing the divine glory proclaimed by creation. Visit Joshua Tree on a clear night and you’ll find stars salting the sky so abundantly they often cannot be distinguished from one another. It’s nearly impossible to imagine a creative impulse that operates at such a scale—to comprehend the unbound glory of a God who can, with a single word of command, create so many stars and set each of them in their specific place.

The many tomes crowding the shelves at Henderson Books seemed to me, that day, almost like the stars on a dark sky night. Every page beautiful, worth reading, unique, the product of a dedicated artist’s long labor—and, in their quantity, abundant far beyond my capacity to read and appreciate each one in my lifetime. But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.

What if humanity’s creative work—our art, our writing, our music, anything we make—is not meant to make us famous or prove how special we are, but is instead meant to be like the stars? Sparkling, glorious, fierce, wild on their own, seen and celebrated by God exactly as they are, set by Him into the place where they will meet and offer grace to those who need it—but ultimately singular entities among a vast collection of creative works, all of which come together to make a superabundant testament to God’s glory?

As we gather tonight for the third Saint Matthew’s Festival of the Arts, this possibility seems to me important to keep in mind. In the vast scale of time, the life of Saint Matthew’s Church—beautiful and important as it is—is ultimately like the stars, a little speck among many whirling, burning glories, and ultimately called to be participant in the collective testament they make to God’s goodness.

When we recognize ourselves and our work within this context, we feel the pressure of a liberating humility, one that, if we let it shape us, frees us to make and receive art unencumbered by the suffocating need to be special, talented, or unique. It does not matter if all who witness our art approve of it; if our art ever becomes famous; or even how many people the testimony of our creativity reaches. What matters is that we surrender our creative work to God as a free, full-hearted offering to Him, and in doing so allow it to become like the stars—a celebratory, superabundant testament to a God who is so exceedingly great our words can only begin to reach after His glory.