A nonpareil of another kind
My family often accuses me of finding sermon illustrations in just about everything, and I confess: I am guilty as charged. Case in point: as I enjoyed one of my favorite treats recently — dark chocolate nonpareils — it occurred to me that these delicious confections and God have something in common. Seriously! You see, the word nonpareil literally means without parallel, having no equal, unrivaled, matchless. If ever there were one who was without parallel, having no equal, unrivaled or matchless, it most certainly is God. And God, who is without parallel, possesses creative powers and a love for humankind that are also, in every respect, nonpareil.
Consider the story of Creation recorded in the first book of the Bible, in the very first chapter of Genesis. Sadly, many who read this account become so caught up in either defending or refuting the plausibility of Creation actually occurring in six 24 hour days that they totally miss the heart and soul of the story, which is a God who takes pleasure in the creative process, who sees possibility in nothingness, and who turns that nothingness into something so awesome and amazing we struggle to comprehend it. At the heart of the Creation story is a God without parallel, having no equal, unrivaled and matchless, without whom nothing that is would be.
This matchless God whom we encounter in Genesis 1 seems to be pleasantly surprised at just how good his creative efforts are. After each act of creation, God steps back, sizes up things and we read, “God saw that is was good.” The original language gives us the sense that it was almost as though God smacked his lips, as one would after eating something delicious, and said, “Um, um good!” It was not “I guess this will do” but rather “This is awesome, totally awesome!”
The Psalmist captures the incredible majesty of God’s handiwork when he writes in Psalm 8: “When I look at the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them? Yet you made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.” In other words, “I’m blown away by what you’ve done, God, by who you are and by what you’ve entrusted to our care!”
In his paraphrase of Psalm 8, Eugene Peterson refers to God as brilliant, and marvels that one
so mighty and powerful would even bother with us human beings, yet God does! Not only does God bother with us: God has given us responsibility for this incredibly beautiful but fragile masterpiece. Sadly, we have failed miserably when it comes to caring for the unrivaled and matchless Creation of our God, largely, I believe, because we have lost our sense of awe and wonder. We walk through fields of purple and fail to see the beauty, past flowers and trees in bloom and barely notice. We sit in traffic or hurry along the sidewalk annoyed by those who are not moving fast enough, rather than really seeing them and the God in whose image they were created. If we choose to live this way — and it is a choice — we will miss out on the nonpareils that make life truly sweet, and I’m not talking about chocolate this time. I’m talking about encounters with the living God, who is alive and well and very present in our world, if we will but pause long enough to notice.