Thought for the Month

"Bless the Lord, ye his angels, mighty in strength, that execute his word, hearkening to the voice of his word; bless the Lord, all ye his hosts, ye his ministers, that execute his will:bless the Lord, all his works in all the places of his dominion" (Psa. 103. 20-22).

A remarkable passage, that, affording a fascinating though brief glimpse of activity in a world beyond the reach of human senses. We may call it the spiritual world, the celestial world, or just by the familiar name "Heaven", but by whatever name we know it and in whatever form we visualize it we refer to an order of things. It is a real sphere of intelligence, a department of Divine creation, in which the Divine Will is carried out without opposition or question. The Church has prayed for centuries "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" and in that prayer testified her faith that there is a sphere of creation in which evil finds no place. There, all that is said and done is in full accord with the standards which the Most High has ordained for the orderly conduct of life in His Creation. It would seem that David was possessed of a rare depth of spiritual insight when he described that world as one of ceaseless activity, as he does in this Psalm. Angels, mighty in strength compared with we puny humans, hastening to carry the Divine word; hosts of ministers busy in the execution of his Will; all this denotes a world in which there is much to do and much being done, developments and progress and achievement on a scale perhaps undreamed of on our human scale of thinking. This is a world as real to its citizens as is ours to us,, but a world much closer to that ultimate reality which is God. In man's world there is progress, of a sort, but there is also much that is static and to a considerable degree there is retrogression. In that world, nothing is static and there is no retrogression. Everything goes forward; ever new fields to conquer and new peaks to scale. The famous astronomer Fred Hoyle remarked in his book "The Nature of the Universe" that "it strikes me as very curious that the Christians have so little to say about how they propose eternity should be spent... What the Christians offer me is an eternity of frustration". Perhaps the criticism is justified; much of Christian evangelism centres around the process of getting ready for the after-life without any clear idea of the nature, and more importantly, the purpose, of that life. The poetic imagery of the Apocalypse, its harps, trumpets, white robes, golden floor and all, has for far too long been tacitly accepted a sufficiently accurate description and in this day and age it definitely is not sufficient. No wonder the active mind of a man like Prof. Hoyle recoils at the prospect of an eternity in which there is nothing left to discover or to do. But, of course, it is not going to be like that. The only view of God consistent with all that Twentieth Century knowledge, sacred and secular, has to tell us is one that depicts Him ceaselessly creating, continually planning to enlarge His vast domain and to people it with fresh forms of life all willingly and happily engaged, like those angels and ministers of Psalm 103, in carrying out His Word and executing His Will. The fact that we see not yet men upon earth in that happy state is merely an indication that we are as yet in the babyhood stage; men will eventually attain maturity and be ushered into the glorious liberty of the children of God.