There is one word in the English language, and one in every language probably, which in some ways is more puzzling than any other, I think. . . . It is the simple word “nothing.” . . .
If I ask you what the word “nothing” means, can you tell me? Has it got any meaning? Surely if this word means something, it does not mean nothing! If you give it a meaning, you have made it mean something. How can you say, for example, “There is nothing in the cupboard”? How can nothing be in the cupboard or anywhere else? How can it be anything? How can you talk about “it”?
. . . I think that a real sense of what the word nothing tries to express would help us to appreciate God more and also see Him much more in everything that is not nothing and see how absolutely remarkable it is that anything exists. It is a great help to true life if we never lose our amazement that people exist, that things exist, that things happen, and that this is so only because God speaks to them and through them. “Let there be light,” and there is light. . . God is saying all the time, “Let there be so and so,” over every single person and thing that exists in the whole of creation. Open your eyes and everything you see speaks of God. Cut God out of anything at all, and it becomes absolutely nothing; it has no reality at all except what God speaks into it.
People have lost the idea of God these days to such an extent that they no longer experience any thrill of wonder at created reality. They take it for granted. They have no idea of what “nothing” signifies, and yet that is the background against which everything created has to be viewed, and when so viewed it gives a view of God in a hidden but true and uplifting way. Bless God for the table; bless Him for the flowers; bless Him for the people; bless Him for each thing you see or hear or feel or have or are! God is very close, and He is showing Himself to us all the time, if we have the right idea about the non-meaning of “nothing.” . . .
If you think about nothingness and about God and about the relationship between the two, you will find that outside God, all is nothingness and that at first there is nothing to talk about but God living His own infinite Trinitarian life. But since it is we who are thinking these thoughts, and we are not God, we can hardly help seeing that God has two and only two activities outside Himself, as it were, and that He wants us to share in both of these activities: Creation and Redemption. . .
When we are living as we should, all that we do is a share in God’s continual creation of the universe. It is not only artists and musicians and poets and so on who create; it is not only builders and architects and scientists who share in God’s creativity. Ordinary human activities of the most commonplace and humdrum kind, if done under God’s will and for His glory, are part of creation. . . . We have, by what we have done, overcome that mysterious thing we call “nothing.” Because of what we do under God, something is; many things are. . . .
We ought to be able to feel happy about the ordinary things we do in life, quite apart from our especially spiritual activities. We ought to be cheered up by the sight of things that exist, made out of nothing by God. We ought to be so aware that all we experience and see is made out of nothing by God that we hear God’s voice or see His glory, to some extent at least, in everything. . . .
However, despite all that I have said, there is always the problem of evil hanging over us in this world, and at the present day the problem of evil is very obvious and seems very threatening. . . So we are to cooperate with God not just in creation but in redemption too: purifying or lifting up things that are damaged, building up human life by good works and making up for sin and its tragic effects. We have both these tasks to accomplish, and both can be rewarding and joy-producing. . . .
When you do anything good, when anything is pleasant, thank and praise God for it because it is good. Be glad because you are cooperating with God in the act of creation. . . But when you suffer, when you feel distress, when things go wrong, instead of regarding this as the opposite of success or creation, see it as it really is, a cooperation with God in His activity of redemption, of putting things right, and more than that, lifting things up to an even better state. If you want to be a true Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ, you must be like Him and both create things by your good works and daily duties, and accept with joy, if possible, all the negative elements that afflict you: suffering, disappointment, failure, distress. When these come, thank God; you are now cooperating with Him in redemption. You are saving yourself in Christ and saving others too. This is a tremendous thing. This is something a paralyzed, helpless person can do, and do it better than any active person.
You might ask whether it is better to create or to redeem what is created. I am pretty sure that redemption is a greater good, a greater wonder than creation. Lifting created things up to God is a greater work than just making them exist. So it is really more blessed to share in redemptive activity than it is in creative activity, though both are very valuable and bring us to God. If only we can get the deep feeling that all the crosses that come our way are redemptive, that they join us to Jesus as Savior and restorer and uplifter of all things, then we can accept the existence of evil in the world and make a glorious use of it as Jesus did. When things go well, praise God the Creator with Whom you have been linked. When things go wrong, praise God the Redeemer, with whom you have been linked. All you have to do to make all the evils around you and within you sources of joy is to place the Sign of the Cross on them. Even the tragedies and disasters that afflict others, even non-Christians, are, through Christ, redemptive.
