It feels quite amazing that I have been posting to this blog for ten whole years. When I put up the first post in 2011, I had no idea whether this would be an initiative that lasted only weeks or months or whether it would have a longer ongoing life. Evidently it was to be the latter and it feels a huge privilege to be able to look back and see that my writings have found their way into well over 100 countries. Amazing!
That, and other surprises brought about by publishing on the blog, had, in fact, started much earlier with occasional attempts to interest publishers. However, it became increasingly evident that such ‘niche’ material was unlikely to find a publisher: poetry, science and faith in combination could never be a publisher’s dream!
Then early in 2011 a friend told me of a friend of his who had started blogging about her narrowboat. The blog had attracted significant interest. I figured that if a narrowboat blog could draw in unknown readers, so could poetry/ science/ faith. ‘The Cross and Cosmos’ blogsite was born. And it did indeed attract interest: slowly at first, 3000 views in the first year, building to 75,000 in five years and on to the present 280,000+ with interest shown from more than 120 countries. Way beyond any of my expectations.
Let me give you a flavour of some of the contents:
Many of the beautiful NASA heritage pictures
from deep space, such as this one of
The Keyhole Nebula,
could be used to illustrate this
reimagining of Job 38.
The glorious ‘ Creation’ passage of Job 38. v4ff was written with the Bible-times knowledge of the Cosmos. This reimagining tries to express how it might have been written with today’s insights into deep space and the cosmos. (I am indebted to Prof Tom McLeish of Durham University for bringing the Job passage to attention in a recent public lecture in Cambridge, UK and thereby sparking this idea. This passage is also explored in his book ‘Faith and Wisdom in Science')
Re-imagining Job 38. 4ff
Where were you when I gave birth to the universe; when my Wisdom called forth particles from the womb of the cosmic void and seeded them into the realm of existence?
Who marked off its dimensions and form and let matter prevail over anti-matter?
On what were its footings set or who provoked its mighty expansion in the blinking of an eye?
How deeply do you comprehend the gift of light or fully understand the mysteries of its nature?
Who of you knows from where the sounds that fill the cosmos emanated or how music distilled its harmonies from the roaring cadences of creation?
Who gave water its extraordinary properties, decreed its many forms and accorded rôles to each that it might adhere to the surfaces of gathering spheres, to nurture and give shape to barren terrains?
Can you make sense of the patterns of constellations as they would be seen from planets in the extreme reaches of the universe?
Can you leap between galaxies or re-fashion the orbits of stars or planets, or yet fully understand the fundamental forces of the cosmos?
Can you yet contemplate travelling to the beautiful Pleiades or loosening the cords of Orion? Have you fully uncovered the laws of the universe or can you emulate God’s care for it?
Could you reduce turbulences that beset distant planets, weather the extreme storms on other worlds or alter the path of the arrow of time?
Have you even perfected knowledge of your own benign planet, understood the reason for its existence and how to encourage your own people to act as responsible stewards for it?
Can you fathom in your exquisitely fashioned brain the mind of your maker or conceive the depth of his love?
Will you ever understand enough to render praise and thanksgiving truly worthy of the Creator of heaven and the entire cosmos?
If you enjoy this re-imagining of scripture, you might also like to look at Psalm 24 v C21 on this blog.
* * * * *
I Imagine
I imagine the God who created the cosmos
as a Spirit, eternally young;
full of light, full of love, full of energy
from whose Word every particle spun,
to be shaped and reshaped through existence
with some to emerge into life
at first simple, then complex, then sentient
bringing love and its dark converse, strife.
This same God, out of deepest compassion,
set power and glory aside,
became human, risked wrath and malevolence
to redeem us from sin’s drowning tide.
I hope these entries might interest you to follow my blog, which is still being updated from time to time and already has a selection of some 300 poems, hymns, songs for children and hopefully entries to challenge and invite readers to think about a God who is not only ‘Maker of heaven and earth’ but the Creator of the vast Universe we now know exists. A universe full of wonders, still only understood in part and a world in which the human brain has developed through God’s evolutionary processes until it can battle against the horrors of a pandemic with vaccines and other medicines to relieve the agony induced by this killer disease.
The index in the right hand column will lead you to much, much more, maybe for another few years if that should be God’s plan.
You will see also that there are several seasonal or themed collections which, I hope might prove useful resources.
