Divine Pattern: From Thought to Creation

According to the pattern shown to thee—Moses descending from God on Sinai knew precisely what he would build and how. The conception of a thing constitutes its first and largest half. It is easier to pour molten iron than to fashion the mould in sand that receives it.

Scripture reveals that those who accomplished the greatest work first wrought out their designs in thought before executing them in act and word. The Creator Himself established His creative designs eternally. When Elohim declared at the week's end, "All very good," He meant that material reality had become what it had always been in idea. Art approaches God's workmanship most closely; we rightly speak of the creations of art. The modern architect, like Moses on Sinai, envisions the completed building before timber is cut or ground broken.

Gérard von Rile, six centuries ago, saw the cathedral completed at Cologne in 1880. Since 1200, German artisans have copied von Rile's thought into stone, working from his plan. The cathedral stands perfect today because it was perfect in conception then. All that Adonai accomplishes flows from eternal purpose—an idea come to utterance. The tree ripens according to purpose that preceded the tree itself. Whether the plan dwells in the seed or whether God constructs each moment against the pattern of His thought, as a mason lays bricks against the plumb-line, the result remains identical. Pattern and purpose grant us three advantages: purposes laid out in open prospect achieve larger, wiser proportion than those framed by momentary impulse; a captain reaches Liverpool faster with course settled at outset than by daily revision; a man's longest purposes prove his best purposes.