Field of Dreams is an imaginative film about Ray Kinsella, an Iowa farmer who becomes inspired to plow under part of his crop and build a baseball field in its place. At points along the way, he hears these words from the great beyond: “If you build it, they will come.” So in the middle of nowhere, he creates a beautiful ball field—well groomed, handsomely striped, and brilliantly lit. It is, in a sense, something arising out of nothing.
The world we live in is the ultimate something-from-nothing occurrence. “In the beginning, God created,”1 starts the book of Genesis and the Bible that contains it. Only the unseen God was present, and from Him proceeded everything we do see . . . and hear and smell and taste and feel. How could matter possibly emerge from non-matter? We don’t know. But it did.
We often muse over the “how” of creation, but what about the “why”? Why such stunning beauty, intricate complexity, and orderly precision? The Bible answers that it had everything to do with something called, “glory”—God’s glory. He made everything not to establish His greatness, but to display it in ways that delight. We behold His beauty in vistas too grand to describe, and we hear His song in waves rhythmically lapping upon the sands. His touch is felt in breezes that embrace us, and His assuring power peals across thundering skies.
Yet God is most intimately displayed in those who set aside their own convenience to tend to someone else’s need, “everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”2 Even the hardest of hearts are moved at selfless acts of kindness, even if only for a moment.
As the movie ends, a steady stream of headlights converge upon the “field of dreams,” bringing people from wherever they are to experience it. So also, God has built everything to reflect His glory, that we would see Him as He is and come to Him.
Lord God, we see you in the splendor that surrounds us and in your Spirit who indwells us. Grace me not only to see your glory, but to display it, as well, that this life would be pleasing to you and a blessing to others. Amen.
1 Genesis 1:1, 2
2 Isaiah 43:6b, 7
[See today’s Scripture in Genesis 1:1-5.]
Are you familiar with the “knowing-doing gap”? It is a common phenomenon in which people talk about an issue, perhaps learn a lot about it, but don’t do anything about it. Many meetings close with participants somehow thinking that, by discussing an issue, they’ve actually done something to address it, even though their contemplations never even approached a resolution, let alone an action step!
The new ruler was like nothing the people had ever seen before. He was a change agent, an envelope-pusher, and a record-breaker . . . but not in the manner any nation would want. His name was Ahab, king of Israel, and he did “more evil in the eyes of the Lord than any of those before him” (1 Kings 16:30), a dubious distinction and difficult to imagine. So I’m picturing Scar in “The Lion King,” for Ahab’s beastly rule in arrogance, weakness, and disgrace was likewise marked by corruption, famine, and malaise.
Paul Nordman—Author 