By FRANK REMKIEWICZ

Columnist

What time of day do you rise? Sound like an odd question? Read on, and you will find there is a method to my madness. As an adult, I have never been able to sleep more than three or four hours a night. If I go to bed too early, I wake up at 0-dark thirty. If I go to bed at two or three in the morning, I wake up at or usually just before dawn. Let me describe the dawn on the eleventh of November. When I arose, I put my jacket on, grabbed my iPad and a cup of coffee, and headed out to my back patio. It was still dark with just a hint of what was to come. I read for a while and looked up to see some thin, white clouds that were fiery red against a sheer white background. I just knew this was going to be special. I read for another ten minutes and looked again, and now, while the backdrop was still white, the front color was a magnificent blue. It was at that point that I prayed. I thanked God first for bringing me to a new day in my life. I followed that up very quickly with a prayer of thanksgiving for the glorious dawn colors. It was at this point that I thought. How can there not be an almighty Creator?

Here are my thoughts. How can a magnificent blue sky leading on into an infinite universe not have an all-powerful being create it? What about the complex process that puts sheer clouds in the sky for all to see? Who or what else could create an ever-rising star, the sun, that begins the process of rising in the east and bringing a myriad of colors to splash across the sky? In my instance, the black turned into a red and white sky and then to a blue and white sky.

To see the colors, there must be a creature capable of seeing and discriminating against those colors. It is, of course, my eye that can separate or differentiate the various colors. For the eye to do that, it must have a process that goes further than just seeing the lights; the brain provides the ability to understand that there are different colors that the eye sees. The brain is housed in an infinitely complex body that functions evenly and systematically, allowing it to direct all bodily functions every nanosecond of the day. Located inside this complicated body lies a heart. That brain takes the scene my eyes have transmitted and then sends it to my heart, which translates that scene into an emotion of wondrous beauty. It is in that moment that my faith overwhelms me.

This is probably neither scientifically nor medically sound, but that spiritual makeup tells me that there is a Creator. That God as a Creator is but one fraction of the totality of God. In the major Christian denominations, there is a belief in a trinitarian God. Three persons make up one God. The common names for these three persons are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Those are the descriptions of each person. I would rather think of these three persons by the action or work that each does. I believe it is better to speak of God as the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Advisor. It is in this manner that I can reflect and meditate on each facet of God without trying to “box” God in. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are static roles. Indeed, we can easily conceive of a father like our own. A Son like our son or our brother. A Spirit that has no corporeal body but is with us all the same. That imagery boxes or compartmentalizes those three persons. However, for me, it is easier to imagine a single God that acts in different ways depending on the activity. Let me try to explain. God, the Creator, is a God who continually creates something new. If we look around, flowers come and go and reappear. Sunrises and sunsets occur regularly, bringing each sunrise with a new day and a sunset with a new memory. God the Redeemer is always there to offer salvation to the next human being willing to accept it. God, the Advisor, is always present, ever ready to provide wisdom to those who ask. Creation, redemption, and advisement are all activities of the same God. It allows each of us to look on God in the context of what we are doing at that moment and reflect and meditate without somehow confining God. Placing God in constraints shrinks God when, in fact, that is not possible if God is truly God. Assigning God to activities does not do such a thing.

Activities such as creating or redeeming are all present-day activities that are constantly moving in a direction. For lack of a better phrase, perpetual motion. Perpetual motion is the motion of an ideal mechanism that could continue to operate indefinitely without drawing upon an external source of energy. Is that just a scientific way of stating the spiritual truth that God has no beginning and God has no end?

Frank Remkiewicz is an area resident and contributes a monthly column focused primarily on faith and religion. He can be reached at fremkiewicz@gmail.com.

Opinions expressed are those of the author.