Despite the good advice given us by W. H. Davies, we allow ourselves to be so full of care that we don’t stand and stare. We miss things. We forget how much we owe to an inventive God.
Our world full of flavour, colour, scent is not the same for a moment. It is a kaleidoscope to make us wonder. That is due not just to a Great Inventor but to the activity of his creatures. ‘Like father, like son’ some might say.
We do well to give credit for this to human beings who have enriched the world. It was human the inventiveness gave us the horse-shoe, the canal-lock, the steam-engine, the oven. When we set our minds to it, we human beings are quite good at bringing something out of nothing and solving perplexing problems.
Is it surprising that this should be so? Given the existence of an inventor-God, no. We have remembered God’s might, justice, mercy compassion but we have lost our understanding of God as an inventor. Everything around us tells us that God is not an idle God. He has not taken time off after inventing tigers and ducks and other creatures, however, that may have been done. He has a providential care for his creatures.
It will be said that this is one of the less important parts of the nature of God. And that may well be so. But it is is interesting that his creatures are so much like him in this matter of inventiveness. Before the incarnation the Greeks and Romans had conjured out of nothing tales of their gods and heroes, Hercules, Perseu, Achilles, Aeneas.It was the best they could do and it was magnificent. Mistaken they may haves been but what an array of human and superhuman features we find here. And when followers in that tradition brought into being astute observers like Sherlock Holmes, muscle-men like Tarzan and enigmatic figures like Gulliver and even Hudibras, we know that inventiveness is part of them.
FARRIERS
Farriers received a royal charter in 1571. The name of their occupation comes from the Latin ‘ferrum’ meaning iron. They fit horse-shoes when necessary and they are blacksmiths specialising in equine hoof care. Most of us are not too far from a farrier. Farriers serving in the household division parade with their axes. Think about that one.
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