Thinking God’s Thoughts After Him

L.M. Montgomery’s novel Emily of New Moon was the required reading of my undergrad that, quite possibly, excited me the very least. How could the misadventures of a young girl on Prince Edward Island possibly compare to the heroic heights of Beowulf or the literary—and ocean—depths of Moby Dick? However, flowing from the love I have for my wife (and her insistence that we read it together), I decided to give it an honest try. And upon finishing Emily of New Moon two summers ago, I now have to admit that Montgomery’s novel very well may have been the single most pleasant reading experience of my undergrad.

Now, if you are a young girl under the age of around seventy-five, were yourself once a young girl under the age of seventy-five, or have once known a young girl under the age of seventy-five, I likely don’t need to explain to you who L.M. Montgomery was. But for those of you who are yet unaware, Lucy Maud Montgomery was the famed Canadian author who penned the incredibly popular Anne of Green Gables novels. To this very day, she is considered to be Canada’s most widely read author. Both series of novels by Montgomery, the Emily of New Moon books and Anne of Green Gables novels, are semi-autobiographical in nature in that they each follow the exploits of a young girl who, like Montgomery, spends her childhood in P.E.I. vested with an unusually large imagination.

The Emily of New Moon books are particularly autobiographical in that, while the novels are still fictional, they chronicle young Emily’s journey as a blossoming writer, mirroring Montgomery’s own journey from years earlier. In this way, Montgomery’s quest throughout these novels as the author, like Emily’s as protagonist, is razor-focused on the art of writing.

As a hardened reader of Lewis, Tolkien, Hemingway, and Dostoevsky,—these men serving, alongside others, as my literary tutors—Montgomery’s addition among them as an influence may seem out of place. And yet there are many things that I have gleaned from Montgomery that have shaped my own writing—wonderful things beyond count that, having not read her work, would have left me poorer for it. Indeed, there is a passage in the second book of the Emily trilogy, Emily Climbs, that is, in my opinion, one of the most hauntingly beautiful expositions on what the writing process truly feels like:

“I forgot everything but that I wanted to put something of the beauty I felt into the words of my poem. When that line came into my mind it didn’t seem to me that I composed it at all—it seemed as if Something Else were trying to speak through me—and it was that Something Else that made the line seem wonderful—and now when it is gone the words seem flat and foolish and the picture I tried to draw in them not so wonderful after all.

Oh, if I could only put things into words as I see them! Mr. Carpenter says, ‘Strive—strive—keep on—words are your medium—make them your slaves—until they will say for you what you want them to say.’ That is true—and I do try—but it seems to me there is something beyond words—any words—something that always escapes when you try to grasp it—and yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t reached for it.”

—L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

Beautiful.

Of course, while this process—this grasping for something beyond words—is perhaps unique to writing, it is not limited to writing. These truths can just as readily apply to music, arithmetic, and parenting.

Johannes Kepler, the German mathematician and astronomer active during the 1500 and 1600s, once said that because humans are made in the image of God, we can “think God’s thoughts after Him.” The world around us—the universe, the atomic realm, the disciplines of reason, literature, science, and art—is understandable and intelligible because God, being a God of order, made them so. And because the world around us can be understood, we undertake as God’s image-bearers the gargantuan task of thinking His thoughts after Him in our endeavor to unravel the mysteries around us and bring Him glory.

As a writer, I feel the weight of this reality. From an early age, I recognized that I had a certain proclivity towards words but it wasn’t until I became a follower of Christ that I finally sensed the purpose behind this talent. Upon becoming a Christian, my talent became a gift, supernaturally bestowed by the Holy Spirit for the edification of the church and for the glory of God. I was always good at writing, more or less, but it’s only now in my Christian life that I sense “as if Something Else were trying to speak through me—and it was that Something Else that made the line seem wonderful.”

In his book Delighting in the Trinity, author Michael Reeves describes this as the “beautification” of the Holy Spirit. God the Holy Spirit not only gifts and inspires the people of God, but He makes their finished product something beautiful. The Spirit of God endows believers with their gifting, imbuing their work with a depth and weight that they couldn’t possibly accomplish in their own strength or by their own imagination. Consider, for example, the beautifying work of the Spirit in the canon of inspired Scripture, the mighty feats of architecture throughout church history, and more recently, the music of Christian composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach. It is in and through the beautifying work of the Spirit that our work ultimately finds purpose—moving from transience to transcendence, touching the very fringes of eternity itself.

“I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft” (Exodus 31:3-5).

Though the very best of our work only but approaches the edges of His glory, we yet strive, strive, and keep on. For, even though some—or most—of the beauty escapes from our grip anytime we try to fasten our hands on it, our labor “yet leaves something in your hand which you wouldn’t have had if you hadn’t reached for it.”

Whether you are a musician, an engineer, an astronaut, a theologian, or anything else in between, your God-given task in the vocation you find yourself is to glorify the Lord and make Him known. Much of this requires that you, in your work and toil, tug hard enough on the various threads dangling around you until they lead back to the Lord Himself. In this way, we are unraveling the truth and beauty around us, thinking God’s very thoughts after Him and feeling our way towards Him in all we do, though He is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:27).

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Photo by Alex Dukhanov, Unsplash

If you enjoyed reading this post, you may also be interested in a similar piece I wrote last year on the topic of music and how, through it, we can trace the fingerprints of God:

“Can You Hear the Music?”