All Creatures of Our God and King

February 27, 2023 Cameron Frank

History

In the late 1100s and early 1200s, the Crusades were in full force. To reach acclaim in society would mean adopting one of two avenues: chivalry and knighthood, or pure mercantilism. Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone was born into a legacy of the latter. But he would choose a different path. Rather than Giovonni Bernardone, the silk magnate, we remember him in history as St. Francis of Assisi.

St. Francis was born the son of a wealthy silk merchant, rising through the merchant class. He would inherit a life of excess and ease, as long as he stayed the course and honored the family name. Ulti‐ mately, he would do neither.

He served a short term as a soldier, where he was eventually held captive for a year. When he returned to his home, he made a pretty radical claim: that he’d had a vision from Jesus, and that his job was to rebuild and restore the church. This began a new phase of unbridled generosity in St. Francis’ life.

Known for his benevolence and adherence to a life of poverty, St. Francis renounced his family and sold everything in his possession. His father grew upset and tried to dissuade the young St. Francis from the life he was choosing, even to the point of beating him, but he wouldn’t recant his new direction.

For the rest of his life, he was noted for his complete adherence to a life of poverty. It was said that he heard a sermon from Matthew 10, where Jesus sends out the disciples with the command to not take anything with them, and not accept any payment. Taking the words of Jesus at face value, he carved those words into every action of his life‐ style and lived them. He preached the gospel of repentance at every opportunity and to any who would listen.

He was also a lover of nature and creation—most depictions of him include some sort of animal that he is caring for. His love for all living things was so great, there are many accounts of him preaching even to birds, reminding them that God loves even the smallest of His creation, and then compelling them to lift their songbird voices to the heavens to praise God.

It would be from this sentiment that he would compose the words to the poem, the “Canticle of the Sun,” that Englishman William Draper would later paraphrase and set to music. Though not included in the original text, the repeated “Alleluia” in our modern versions further reinforces our imperative to lift our voice and sing praises to the Creator.

Devotion

The image of an Italian friar preaching to a flock of birds, reminding them of Jesus’ words in Matthew 6 and imploring them to lift their songbird voices in worship may be amusing, but there’s also a beautiful simplicity in that kind of faith. In a similar way, when St. Francis heard Jesus tell His disciples to give up everything, accept no payment and simply preach the gospel, he took Jesus at His word and lived that way for the rest of his life.

One could maybe argue that he took the words a little too literally, or ignored later teachings from the New Testament on similar subjects, but I think we would all agree that it’s easier said than done to apply the Bible that simply to our lives.

Throughout the Psalms, the psalmists implore us to make the worship and exaltation of the Father a part of everything we do—even our very breath. We are told to make much of meditating on the Word, allowing it to fill every space of time and every nook and cranny of our thought. The apostle Paul encourages us at least three times to be in continual prayer, a picture of a communal, living relationship with God.

Despite these examples and more, it’s far too easy to make our faith simply a part of our life instead of the very foundation of our life. Not that we should embrace a legalistic checklist of ways that we can hope to make God happy; that’s absolutely not the answer. But as the beloved children of God, we should be able to look at creation and see a promise.

The more we recognize that promise as the Creator of everything who loves us and made a way for us to be with Him for eternity through the blood of a perfect sacrifice, the more we should be compelled to exalt Him. It’s not legalism or duty that calls us to worship. It’s the simple beauty of recognizing that we are His, He is good, and taking those truths for the simple facts they are.

Reflect on the good God of creation. The same creation that our spiritual ancestors marveled at for centuries is what we see around us that compels us to worship our Creator.

“Let all things their Creator bless.”

Related Scripture

Psalm 145:1-7; Psalm 148