Genesis 9:3

Genesis 9:3

How are we to use the creation of God so that it may help towards our own supreme object? (1) We can studycreated things; we can see God Himself through them. (2) We may useGod's creation for our necessity, for our advantage, and for our delight. (3) We are to abstainfrom it in obedience to temperance and to the rules of discipline. Of these three ways of using the creation, the first is the most noble; the second is the most common; the third is the most necessary. To some the means of serving God have grown so all-important that they have forgotten altogether that it was to serve God that they set out. The source of error lies in placing the means before us, as if they were the end, and leaving out the thought of the end in our lives and conversation. When we go wrong in our work or our leisure, our words or our silence, we do it because we forget the end of everything; because we dethrone from its rightful, its eternal seat, the strong, the bright, the radiant remembrance that we are of God, that we are in God, and that we are on our way to God.

Archbishop Benson, Boy Life: Sundays in Wellington College,p. 26.

References: Genesis 9:1. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 82.Genesis 9:5; Genesis 9:6. G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to my Friends,p. 320.