From the Editor

BreakPoint WorldView » March 2009

I love the words of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. He writes of God’s Grandeur saying, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,/ It will flame out like shining from shook foil. . . . ” Sometimes that charge is electric as in the roar of a waterfall or the magnificence of a canyon in the fading light of the sun. Other times God’s grandeur is experienced in a way more like the whisper in Elijah’s ear.

In this month’s BreakPoint WorldView magazine, T.M. Moore examines how the Celtic Christians experienced God’s grandeur in nature. Crag and forest, fawn and fern, all spoke of wonders and ways to praise the Creator. How can Irish spirituality inform our own? The answer, Moore writes is that Celtic Christians show us “the creation is a vast book of revelation—the very speech of the Father . . .” (Ps. 19:1-1).

But for the Christian, we can find reflections of God and his moral order in more than just the fields and the flowers, but also in the works of men and women who bear his image. Gina Dalfonzo shows us, for example, religious elements in a very unexpected place—in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. From the shadow of the cross in the film Notorious to the curve toward justice in films like Rope, Dalfonzo explores what we can learn about how Hitchcock’s Catholic upbringing informed the worldview of his art.

Reverend Robert Lynn moves our thoughts to examine our own role in creation and preservation. He begins with the premise that Christians today are known more by what we oppose than by what we support. He urges us to consider what God calls us to be for in the world and to how we can be a part of more than simply critiquing culture or copying culture. In the words of Andy Crouch, Lynn calls us to be a part of creating culture.

I hope you’ll enjoy this month’s issue of BreakPoint WorldView magazine, and that it will open your eyes to how creation and created work sometime speak of God, and how we too can participate in the task of creating culture.

Catherine Larson is a senior writer and editor for BreakPoint. She is the editor of WorldView online magazine and The Point radio. As We Forgive: Stories of Reconciliation from Rwanda is her first book, just released on February 1st. She regularly shares her thoughts on topics related to forgiveness and reconciliation at AsWeForgiveBook.com.