Grace and Truth column

Do you imagine God with a clenched hand or an open hand? Is the God you worship a giver or a taker?

For the past year I have been soaking in the spirit of God’s generosity. The God of the Bible is the God of the open hand. Psalm 145:16 says, God, “you open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing” (TNIV). The Message translation is, “Generous to a fault, you lavish your favor on all creatures.” Not only do we as humans experience God’s generosity, but all living things, plants and animals, experience it.

God lavished beauty, complexity and grandeur in creating the world. Consider flowers. In the fall of 2007, Amanda, my wife, and I put in a perennial flower garden across the northeast corner of our backyard. We put in 70-some plants of a dozen varieties, and this past summer I loved walking the backyard to gaze at what was blooming, from the perfectly shaped trumpets of Asiatic lilies to the profuse blooms and bright colors of impatiens. We had lilies that bloom only a day and rose bushes covered with dozens of blooms. I am mesmerized by the intense colors and the abundant blooms.

Did you know that there are 600 varieties of asters and 25,000 varieties of orchids? Those are just two of 270,000 species of flowers. Why so many? What extravagance! What lavish, overwhelming beauty! God of the open hand has poured out his blessing in creation.

I am overwhelmed by the grandeur of God’s creation. A thousand stars in the sky would be plenty. I can only keep track of a half dozen or so by name. We can actually see about 5,000 stars with the naked eye. Surely that would be enough. But our galaxy has 400 billion stars.

And there are now 10 billion galaxies within reach of our most powerful telescopes. There are 70 sextillion stars (7 with 22 zeroes). To think of it another way, there are 10 times as many stars as all the grains of sand on all the world’s beaches and in all the world’s deserts. God of the open hand lavished complexity and majesty in the creation of the universe and the earth.

Why such grandeur, such beauty, such intricacy in God’s creation? God says, “I made it for you to enjoy, to contemplate, to fire your imagination and to saturate your soul.” In Genesis 2:16, the Lord completed the Garden of Eden and gave it to Adam. “Here it is. For you. You are free to eat of any tree of the garden. Enjoy.” One tree Adam and Eve were not to eat from, but that’s another story.

“Earth is drenched in God’s affectionate satisfaction” (Psalm 33:5 The Message). The description of God’s generous, extravagant creation continues: “The skies were made by God’s command; he breathed the word and the stars popped out. He scooped Sea into his jug, put Ocean in his keg” (Psalm 33:6-7 The Message).

We become what we honor and worship. As we behold God as extravagantly generous, our hearts will bloom with greater generosity. Our churches will become baskets of generosity and beacons of hope. My congregation has been known to talk poor, as if God were tightfisted. “We can’t decide. We can’t find people. We don’t have money. Or we have it, but people won’t give it.”

I dream that Mennonite Church USA will become a generous church, because God has been outrageously generous with us. “We can make up our minds and make decisions. We can get things done. We have willing, talented people resources. We have substantial financial resources, and we will commit them to God’s mission. We have been blessed to be a blessing.” Start your next church board or council meeting with this litany.

Clarence Rempel is pastor of First Mennonite Church in Newton, Kan.