"Let us make mankind in our image . . . .” Genesis 1:26

Last week I wrote about one author’s view of the origins of life and the universe through the lens of science, and how many of man’s questions (using science alone) remain unanswerable. But as I was sitting in my backyard the other day, thoroughly enjoying a beautiful spring day, it became apparent to me that there is no greater argument for God’s involvement in the creation than the beauty of the design itself.

Nature is not hodgepodge. Plants and animals are perfectly suited for their natural habitat. Colors and textures complement each other and excite the senses. Sunrises and sunsets are breathtaking in their beauty. These attributes are not the result of randomness or chance. They are the work of a master artist and designer. Why do I think that?

Because mankind was made in God’s image, and one of the attributes we inherited was the desire to create. And when we create, we think about what we are going to do. We make initial sketches. We write out storyboards. We create preliminary drafts, and then we go to work, hoping to create something that will stir others’ souls, lift their spirits, or challenge them to think.  We take joy in designing a room, in painting a picture, in writing a story. And we are flawed humans.

So if we have that much joy and take that much care in our creations, how could we even think that this amazing universe and beautiful world, so perfectly made, would not be a product of divine creative thought. As the following verses state:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Psalm 19:1

“How many are your works, LORD! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures.There is the sea, vast and spacious, teeming with creatures beyond number— living things both large and small.” Psalm 104:24-25

And though God has made us inquisitive and desires us to seek to understand the world He has created, we also need to realize that –– as the following verse states––we can never fully understand the mysteries of creation, and even less so if we leave God out of the equation completely.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

“Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? Do you not remember?” Mark 8:18

I have never really been an audiobook listener as I enjoy sitting, holding a book, and visually taking in the words. But this past year I found myself on the road for long stretches of time, so picked up an audiobook by a favorite secular writer of mine. He has written mostly biographical travel books, but he also wrote an informational book about the scientific world from the beginning of time.

As I was listening to it, I was again struck by the realization that those who do not believe in God as designer and creator cannot or will not see His hand at work regardless of the evidence. Listen to how close this author comes to admitting that a supreme being had to be involved but stops just short of giving God credit. Whether this is because of his own personal beliefs or because he is trying to keep his book strictly within the scientific realm, I don’t know. But below are a few excerpts from his book followed by a parallel verse from the Bible.

“We live in a universe whose age we can’t quite compute, surrounded by stars whose distances we don’t all together know, filled with matter we can’t identify, operating in conformist with physical laws whose properties we don’t totally understand.” (Disc 3, Segment 2)

(“He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.” Psalm 147:4)

“There is only one place, an inconspicuous outpost of the Milky Way called Earth, that will sustain you…. It appears that if you wish to have a planet suitable for life, you have to be just awfully lucky, and the more advanced the life, the luckier you have to be.” (Disc 3, Segment 10)

(“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1)

“The food chain is thus hopelessly top-heavy but somehow it works. Remarkably no one knows how.”

(“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Matthew 6:26)

“All of this is a very roundabout way of making the point that we know very little about earth’s biggest system. But as you shall see, once we start talking about life, there is a great deal we don’t know, not least how it got going in the first place…."

(“'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD.” Isaiah 55:8)

“Despite half a century of further study, we are no nearer to synthesizing life today than we were in 1953, and much further away from thinking we can….

("Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, …. Jeremiah 1:5)

“No one really knows but there may be as many as a million types of protein in the human body and each one is a little miracle. By all the laws of probability, proteins shouldn’t exist….

“The chances of a 1,055 sequence molecule like collagen spontaneously self-assembling are frankly nil….

“It is rather as if all the ingredients in your kitchen somehow got together and baked themselves into a cake, but a cake that could moreover divide when necessary to produce more cakes. It is little wonder that we call it the miracle of life…. (All of the above are from Disc 4, Segment 2)


(“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—“ Job 38:4-6)
 
Let us have eyes to see and ears to hear.  

Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything. Random House: 2003. Audiobook

Today is my birthday. That’s right. April 14, 19––. (Sorry, you don’t get to know the rest of it.) Though today is a Saturday like all other Saturdays, it feels extra special to me. Birthdays have a way of doing that, don’t they?

On this occasion, I would like to share with you a story my mother told me regarding my birth that has impacted my life ever since.

I was born in Corning, a small town in northern California. In the months leading up to my birth, every day, a minister from one of the local churches would walk by our house on his way to and from work. He would stop by the house and ask if he could pray for the unborn baby. He was not the minister of my parents’ church, nor was he trying to recruit them to attend his. His only comment of explanation was (and I quote my mother’s memory), “I feel God has great plans for this baby.” And then they would pray.

My mother told me this story early in my life, so any time I experienced any sort of success, I would think, “This is how I am going to be great.” But then almost on the heels of success, I would encounter defeats and difficult disappointments. But despite these ups and downs, I never forgot that anonymous minister’s words: “God has great plans for this baby,” because I know two things. One––God makes promises, and two––God keeps them.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: God didn’t actually make this promise, a minister did, but I would suggest to you that God did  lay it on his heart to stop and relate this message to my mother. And I believe it was indeed  a promise from God, but a promise God makes to each one of us, for God has set all of us apart for great things.

How do I know this? First of all, because God made each one of us unique. As David said in Psalm 139:13: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.”

Second, because the words God spoke to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5 could be said to each one of us: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.”

Anyone sanctified by the blood of Christ has been set apart by God to do great things for His kingdom. Whether or not those achievements equate to greatness in the eyes of the world, who knows.

The words of that minister to my mother and his prayers for me I have always considered my “birth promise.”

But we must all remember that Bible is full of God’s promises, and as soon as we accept Jesus as our Savior, we are born again, and all those promises become our––birth promises.

 I started my look at God’s promises with His promise of love––unconditional and eternal––because I believe love is our most basic need. THEN I did a bit of a refresher course on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and learned that he believed our physiological and safety needs preceded our need for love and belonging.  And that is true. If we cannot sustain our physical life, then our emotional life will not matter.

However, though love and the sense of belonging among humans may come third in the hierarchy, I still believe that God’s love for us––that love which cannot be separated by “death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing” (Romans 8:38-39), is our foundation. It is because of His immeasurable love that we can rest in his other promises, such as His Promise of Provision.

Since the creation, when God provided for every need that Adam and Eve had (both before and after the fall), God has provided the basic needs for his people (as He did by providing manna and quail in the wilderness), and promises to continue to do so.  The following verses are a few reminders of this promise.

In Matthew 6:25-33 Jesus exhorts his listeners not to worry about the basics, pointing to the birds and lilies and reminding us that the Father has taken care of them and that He “knows that [we] need all these things,” as well. He then tells us to "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

Paul tells us in Philippians 4:19 that “… my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus,”  and then in Ephesians 3:20, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us,  to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!”

Through Asaph the psalmist, God reminds us that “I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” (Psalms 81:10)

David, in the well known Psalm 23, begins with the comforting reminder that "The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing."

And then, of course, the ultimate reminder, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32)

Does this mean we will never hunger or be in need of money or housing? No. Since the fall of Adam and Eve, we have had to experience lack and work for our provision. But God does promise that He knows our needs and will take care of us, so let us not lose faith but during times of need. Let us lay those needs before the One who always keeps His promise and trust Him.