Things: Supper of the Lamb

Robert Farrar Capon writes:
     "But if man's attention is repaid so handsomely, his inattention costs him dearly.  Every time he diagrams something instead of looking at it, every time he regards not what a thing is but what it can be made to mean to him - every time he substitutes a conceit for a fact - he gets grease all over the kitchen of the world.  Reality slips away from him; and he is left with nothing but the oldest monstrosity in the world: an idol.  Things must be met for themselves.  To take them only for their meaning is to convert them into gods- to make them too important, and therefore to make them unimportant all together.  Idolatry has two faults.  It is not only a slur to the true God; it also insults true things."

     God loves things.  He loves the world.  So much so that He made His only Son out of atoms and particles. Jesus has real flesh forever.  He made oceans, glaciers, mountains and pumpkins.  He said to the potato bug, "be" and there he was.  And not only did God create all things, but He proclaimed that it was all good.  I always liked the scene in The Magicians Nephew where Aslan is calling Narnia into existence.  He is pacing to and fro and singing mountains and valleys into the new world.  I get the picture of Christ, walking through the world and taking thought of rabbits, sycamore trees, bugs and flowers.  He is pleased to make "stuff."  Not one single atom is out of place in the world that God created.  He, in His endless wisdom made all things beautiful and good.  And we, because we were made in His image, are called to be like Him.  We are called to beautify the world with "stuff."  This may mean baking a really good batch of cookies, or planting a nice garden.  It could be creating wonderful music, or writing poetry.  It means that the mess that the children leave on the living room floor is beautiful too, because they bare His image and create instinctively.
      The philosophers are huge on "forms," or nebulous floating things that cannot be explained or defined.  They love to argue that true wisdom and beauty are "above" the physical creation.  Sad, so so sad.  Who wakes up in the morning and say's...."well, I love the idea of my wife, but she may or may not exist?"  All the while she is laying next to you in bed.  God, the Holy Trinity, does not operate this way.  He is concerned with physical stuff and He made a whole lot of it.  True spirituality comes from God, and He say's....."look at the lilies in the field, and learn from that."  Have we considered the lilies today?????