Working with what we already have

For: The Institute of Contemporary and Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen's University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt.

Last Thursday, the under-25 year old “men” of the church, took on the over-25 men in a game of indoor soccer. I am a bit of an active-challenged person at the moment, and the game took my body by surprise. In protest, my body responded with a huge blister/callus thing on the sole of my right foot.

During our camp this weekend, I was playing some more soccer and noticed something flapping around in my sock. I removed my shoes and socks to find a large piece of skin, which was about the size of a matchbox. (Sorry about how gross this all kind of is...)

The weird thing is this; upon holding that piece of skin and looking at it, the Holy Spirit used it as an opportunity and I found myself looking at it in awe, saying “No human hand has ever been able to make this stuff.”

I looked down at my other foot which still had my shoe on it. My shoe was made of materials that man had manipulated to create various kinds of leathers and rubbers.

My clothes were made of different kinds of cottons, again, just a material that man has made by taking a cotton plant and spinning it into yarn or thread. Again, just manipulating something that already exists.

In my hand, I held a piece of skin. Something that mankind has never and I even boldly write - will never - be able to make out of thin air.

Skin, cows, tree sap and cotton plants all have something in common... We didn’t make them. He, the Creator, did.

Dan Wilt puts it pretty good in this quote “Our wildest creations as human beings, with all due respect to the great scientists of this world, have always begun with something that God already created. We have yet to make our own dust out of which to make a human being. We have yet to create a new colour, a new air to breathe or a new building block of life. We work with what is, and we manipulate what is in order to discover, explore and rejoice in the world for which we are made.”

I feel privileged and humbled to be where I sit in the order of things. I'm not the creator, but I have the privilege to be able to manipulate to create from what He has created first.