From the book “Original Grace” by Adam S. Miller, under the title “Time”:
My son didn’t arrive in 2004 as a finished product. His birth was a crucial moment, a tipping point, in his creation. But that moment wasn’t the beginning or the end. For the past sixteen years he suffered a continual process of creation, dissolution, and recreation as bones grew, skin stretched, teeth were lost, rolls of baby fat disappeared, cuts healed, muscles developed, neurons wired, and shoulders broadened.
At times the gradual pace of such changes can mask what’s really happening, and we can fake being finished. But at other times, especially with teenagers, the truth is much harder to ignore. Teenagers are so obviously a work in progress, so patently raw and unfinished. Their edges are blurry and their boundaries are mobile. They can’t hide what most adults are ashamed to show: the fact that they are being created—visibly, day by day—before our eyes.
Sitting next to my son in that dark car, I couldn’t help but feel—in his flickering profile, in the fillings of my teeth, in the hum of the car’s engine, in my shallow intake of breath, in his white-knuckled grip, in the blur of houses and trees and cars streaming past our windows at freeway speeds—the upward surge of the world’s on going creation.
Is God finished with this world? Is he done creating it? Is he done creating us? When is the moment of creation? When, exactly, is the beginning?
The beginning, the moment of creation, is always now. Creation unfolds exclusively in the present tense. Nothing is created in the past—though the past was once present. And nothing is created in the future—though the future will eventually arrive. Seated in that car, refracted in the image of my son, I could feel the pitch and yaw of creation roll through me in waves, up from my toes, through my hips and into the base of my skull, a shimmering field of matter and sensation: the world as open rather than closed, as unfolding rather than finished. I could feel the squeeze of God’s hand, the pressure of creation, live and electric.
God tells Moses: “Look, and I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands; but not all, for my works are without end, and also my words, for they never cease. Wherefore no man can behold all my works, except he behold all my glory” (Moses 1:4-5). Moses looks and sees the glory of God. Baptized in that fire he discovers that God’s works are without end. Why don’t they end? Because God is always creating new worlds, God also continues to create (and recreate) all the worlds he’s already set in motion. ~Adam S. Miller, Original Grace (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2022) 91-93
