Workmanship

Psalm-like poem inspired by Isaiah.

Workmanship

Let me speak of the wonders of the world
Let me sing of the beauties of creation.

Science observes and says, "Lo! It is regular!
We can calculate its nature,
We can group our observations
and call them laws."
They put on blinkers to prevent distraction
And then become blind in their focus.
They say, "There is no god, for lo, it is regular.
Let us worship mathematics
And build a shrine to order."

But he is the God of all order
It is he who makes the laws
It is he who lays them down.
He says to the molecules, "Dance!" and they dance
To the Sun, "Burn!" and it burns.
He scatters the electrons with his hands
And moulds the stars with his fingertips.
It is he who formed gravitation's elipse
And he who sets the planets in their orbits.
He nurtured the stars like gardens,
Generation on generation
To give us iron for our haemoglobin.
He gives us our breath,
and the air that we breathe,
Our life, and the ground upon which we walk.

The Earth is like a jewel in a setting of silver
A pendant of lapis and emerald
resting on velvet black.
He stirred the breath of the sun and it condensed
a molten ball, he set it spinning.
He cooled its crust into land
Set its bowels turning in slow currents
Pushed up its mountains by moving continents
He carved its valleys with rushing waters.
Like a master jeweller,
he set it with green and brown and blue,
dusted it with snow and clouds
and said "It is good."

Yet even his believers say,
"He is a God of the cracks.
If we do not fight reason with faith
He will dissappear."
Oh foolish people!
Reason and faith are the left hand and the right hand.
If you abandon reason, you have but one arm.
The Lord does not hide in cracks
Nor does he cower before reason.
He gives Man his reason and his foolishness.
He gives light to the blind
and confounds those who see.

-- Kathryn A 30-1-2006