the importance of being earnest

I'm remembering Annie Dillard's Journey to the Pole, and the way she spoke of our strange fondness for penguins. We find them endearing because we see in their biped waddling and earnest bobbing a humorous caricature of ourselves. Perhaps, she muses, a similar relationship exists between humans and God. Perhaps he finds the fumblingly determined circus of our lives endearing because in it he sees a humorous caricature of his own great work.

Maybe if I thought more often about how all my grave pontificating, my frenzied efforts to act beautifully and graciously and uprightly, must strike him (who is the possessor in full of all that I dimly echo), I would find myself spreading my hands in sheepish acknowledgment of how clueless I really am. I would laugh with him.

I don't mean to disparage the wonderful truth about God's image, how my nature is stamped with it. I'm awed when I consider that I cannot but emulate my Creator, that he has intended it to be so and does indeed delight in it. Nevertheless, so often I forget that the flipside of that awe is humility: a recognition of the gulf between the Creator and his sin-darkened image in my frail soul. The idea that I have ever felt a moment's self-importance should elicit my most deserving derision.

It is important to be earnest. I ought to spend my life tirelessly pursuing perfect godliness. It is, in part, what I'm here to do.

But before that, I am here to take a good hard look at my outrageous self, and a good hard look at the Beauty that delights in me. And I am to spread my hands towards him and laugh, trusting him to do the work of teaching me how my earnest, godlike emulation delights him best.

Before anything else, I am here to adore.