One of my favorite poems (from one of my favorite poets) is “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Glory be to God for dappled things –
  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
     For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
  Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
     And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
     With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
                               Praise him.

Look at that last line: “He fathers-forth . . .” It’s a beautiful expression. The skies, the brinded cows, the moles and trout, the finches, and fallowed fields—all of these things are “fathered-forth.”

God’s holiness is always wrapped up in his fatherly care—a mysterious love that goes before us and beyond us.

This brings a whole new perspective to that initial sentence from the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name” (Matt. 6:9). Why hallowed? Because his fatherly hand touches everything. Because he fathers-forth the entire universe without being seen. Because his wildly creative and loving care is imprinted on mussel shells and magpie nests. God’s holiness is always wrapped up in his fatherly care—a mysterious love that goes before us and beyond us.

A Fathered Place

Recently, the same wording came up in a passage I read from Tim Chester (Enjoying God). “We live in a fathered world,” he wrote. And goes on to relate this truth to the sad events of the fall in Genesis 3—events that still haunt our broken world.

The lie of the serpent in the Garden of Eden was that God is an uncaring Father and so we should go it alone. Satan didn’t dispute the existence of God nor his power. The lie was that God doesn’t care. All the evidence was to the contrary. God had placed Adam and Eve in a place of security and plenty—and given them the fruit of every tree except one. His provision was complete. Yet humanity believed the lie that God is distant and uncaring. We still do. Still today, says Jesus, our problem is that we lack faith (Luke 12:28). We don’t believe God cares. We think of him as distant. We see this world as unfathered. Imagine a young child having a nightmare. The monsters are closing in and about to pounce. Then the child becomes aware of being shaken. They open their eyes and see the concerned face of their father. Suddenly everything is OK and they can smile again. Our problem is that we often think the threats in our lives are reality and the promises of God are like a dream world. But many of the threats we face are a dream. We play out the “what ifs” and “maybes” in our mind, creating all sorts of frightening possibilities. But they’re not real. They exist only in our imagination. Other problems are all too real. But they’re not the whole truth. We need to be shaken by God’s word out of the dreamland in which God is absent and into the real world, the fathered world. We need to open the eyes of faith and see the smile of our heavenly Father. (Enjoying God, 44)

Chester is right: by default, we tend to see the world around us as unfathered. We live our waking days in the dreamland of God’s absence. And that’s hard on us, isn’t it? It’s hard to live with a lie. It’s hard to walk through life as if God hasn’t fathered-forth the beauty around us—because he has.

I talk about the great lie from the serpent in a book that encourages us to embrace the truth of God’s presence. Satan’s lie is that God is not really here. Or, if he is here, it doesn’t matter.

Applications

As much as I’m a dreamer, I’m practically-minded when it comes to theology. I want the truth to land in my morning routine or in my daily grind at work. So, what concrete difference does it make to see the world around us as Fathered? Here are two applications.

1. We’re never alone. At various points throughout your day, you may find yourself alone in some space—your bedroom, an office, a car. It’s so easy to believe that we are on our own in these situations, that we are solitary. But we never are. The truth that God Fathers-forth everything means that he’s Fathered-forth us. We are products of God’s creative speech. And the very Word of his mouth is upholding us right now (Heb. 1:3; Col. 1:17). The one who Fathered you forth is still Fathering you at this very second. He is present. And one of the best ways to enforce that truth is simply for us to speak to him. Do you do that? Do you ask God questions or point out what you see? Do you pour out your frustrations to him, as you would to the closest friend? You can. He is there, and he is listening. He Fathered you forth, and he Fathers you now. Take a moment today to speak with your Father.
2. Take and ask. If God has Fathered-forth all the things around us, we can pick out something in our surroundings and ask what it reflects of God’s Fatherly care. My coffee mug (sadly empty) is on the table next to me. He has provided all the minerals in the clay that was baked to make it. He provided the minds that designed the mug. He provided the hands that shaped it and finished it. He provided the coffee berries that were roasted and ground and used to make the coffee I drank. That coffee is a powerful testament to something: God always provides—mostly when we’re ignorant of his goodness. God was in the various stages of enabling the production of that mug long before I purchased it. I was ignorant of his intentions to bless me with his goodness. And still he worked. He provides so much that I’m ignorant of. That’s love. I can sip my coffee in worship!

Wherever you are today, you live in a Fathered universe. Our world is no cold and impersonal place. It is shot through with the personality of our heavenly Father and all the various ways he’s fathering us in the details.

Gerard Manley Hopkins had it right: Praise him. Just praise him.

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