Issue 1320 – Questions – December 13, 2023

I am on what I hope is the tail end of a nasty cold-type bug (Not the evil virus that shall not be named. I tested negative.) I even had to skip going to church on Sunday and watch it online. Fortunately, someone was able to take my shift on the greeting team (Thanks, June.)

Yesterday, I was able to get out of the house with Kathy for a while. We took our lawn chairs and sat down by the Fraser River in Matsqui Park. It was a much needed getaway, I don’t feel so housebound anymore.

I watched a trio of double-breasted cormorants sunning themselves on a couple of driftwood spars sticking out of the water. Taking turns, two would stand on the stumps while the third swam and fished. The standing birds spread their wings to dry them and preen. I couldn’t get a decent shot with my phone, so I found a similar one online.

Cormorants are pretty common here, so there wasn’t anything spectacular or new to see them. I have often seen them at Matsqui.

Still, when I think of all the elements of the created order that make up an ordinary scene such as that, I am amazed. It makes me ponder questions like “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and “How could a complex system come together as what I was seeing?

Complex? Didn’t I say it was remarkably ordinary? I did, but ordinary doesn’t mean simple.

Thanks to the hydrological cycle, I was sitting along the shores of a river that flows from the mountains into the ocean. The birds I was watching feed on fish. That means there must be fish and a habitat for them to breed and survive with all of its complexity.

I looked at them through my eyes, which are incredibly complex organs, part of an even more complexly designed body. I was thinking about what I saw. Where does the ability to do that come from?

I could talk about the cycle that produced the trees that eventually left the driftwood spars. Or the vehicle that got me there, or everything that went into making the phone I tried using to take a picture.

When you stop and ponder them, even the most ordinary, seemingly simplest things are part of a much larger, awe-inspiring whole. The systems are too complex and interdependent to have ever happened by a random event. The world cries out that there is a designer.

Admittedly, the concept of an intelligent designer doesn’t prove the Christian God exists. Still, I cannot imagine being intellectually honest and not saying that someone or something put it all together. The simple probability of anything existing is staggeringly against it; the odds against complex interdependent systems existing and functioning are so high that I don’t think they can be calculated.

I have often talked to people who say things like, “If there is a God, why doesn’t He reveal himself?” The answer is that He reveals himself in everything around us and even in the fact that we exist or can ask those questions.

He has revealed himself in creation, in the Bible and the incarnation of Christ. The heavens and everything in them point us towards Him.

That is why Paul could write;

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. Romans 1:19-20

It is why the Psalmist could say that.

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat. Psalm 19:1-6

If you don’t yet know this God, it is time to seek Him out. If you know Him, praise Him for His revelation, grace and mercy.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

Be blessed

Hallelu Yah / Praise God 

Kevin

Gleanings From The Word

Experience an extraordinary God in ordinary life. 

Soli Deo Gloria (For the Glory of God alone)

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