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| The background for this image was found on this website as a free download. I am grateful. |
This nasheed is attributed on Youtube in different places to both David Wharnsby Ali and Yusuf Israel. It's popular in a version sung by children, but I don't like that as much, so I'll share this one. I'm not sure who wrote it originally, but I am sure this is David Wharnsby Ali singing it. Not embedded because they disabled that option.
"So God is the Creator. Big deal, I already knew that, tell me something I didn't know." I'll admit that this has been my attitude some of the time. Muslims teach it to their children in songs like the one above. We teach it to little children in Sunday School. It makes an easy lesson. We hear it so much and say it so much that I think we sometimes lose track of how awesome this is. That is, when we aren't getting sidetracked into fruitless arguments about exactly what God's creation process looked like, fighting for or against a literal interpretation of Genesis 1. I believe Genesis 1 contains a true picture of creation. I am not at all convinced that it is meant to be a detailed scientific description of how the world was created. God certainly has the power to have created the world in anyway he chose, and taking any amount of time that he chose. But I do not think that a belief that the book of Genesis is inspired by God requires us to come to conclusions about this.
Before I was a Christian, I didn't much care who or what, if anything, created the world. It didn't happen one of the questions that captured my imagination. When I became a Christian, it was part of the package. "I believe in God, the Father, maker of heaven and earth and of all things seen and unseen..."
But I think perhaps we get a glimpse of the power of this aspect of God's nature when we see it play out in a situation where the people were not monotheists. When Jonah was running from God, he told the people that he was running away from YHWH. When a storm arises, they woke him up to come and pray. (I think their reasoning was that they should call on as many gods as possible--perhaps one of them would answer.). But then they cast lots to decide that Jonah was the reason for their problems. That's when he told them that the God he worshiped was the creator: "I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land." When they realize with which god he has tangled with, from which god he is running, they are terrified. And rightly so. This is no little, local "god." This is God.
And as I ponder the vastness of what it is that God has created, as I begin to unpack that simple statement that God created the universe, I find myself drawn into worship. Like staring into different levels of a Mandelbrot set, the world is stunningly beautiful and complex at both the macrocosmic and microcosmic levels. (By the way, this wonderful created universe includes the Mandelbrot set, the mathematics that makes it possible, and the imaginations that figured out how to display it in all its dizzying beauty.)
Al-Khaliq
You spoke the world into being
Creatures both seen and unseen
Spirit and flesh came to life at your touch
My mind can't imagine how you did so much
Every star and every planet
Each electron spinning so fast
Every galaxy whirling so slowly
In the dizzying cosmic dance
Each blade of grass and every kitten
Each grain of sand and each fish in the sea
Thunder and lightning, sparrows and chickens
You made it all; You caused it to be.
You made the whole world
And you made me.
My Creator created the world--
Fire and water and vacuum and dust
Unthinkable vastness
And hearts that can trust.
My Creator created the world.
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