Our God is an awesome God. He created our entire universe all on his lonesome. How many times do we actually sit back and grasp the magnitude of it all. In the movie Lion King, Mufasa talks about the great “Circle of Life” to which Elton John so lovingly provides his vocals. The lions die and fertilize the grass, and the grass grows and the wildebeest eat the grass. Then the lions eat the wildebeest. The earth rotates around the sun and the seasons come and then go and come and go again. Water freezes when it gets to be a certain temperature it freezes, and when it gets much hotter it turns to steam. Complicated strands of DNA make up our blood. Pi equals 3.141592653589793… The earth is full of millions and millions of organisms as large as a blue whale and as small as Ciliates. Our world is surrounded by millions of stars that are millions of miles away, and yet most of us are tired just running a 5k.
How many times do we sit back and think about how truly complex and extraordinary our universe is? I know that I don’t nearly enough. It is absolutely mind boggling how powerful our God is. Oddly enough we are the focal point of his creation. We are what matters to him the most. We were made to rule over it all and to above all worship and love him, our creator. As vast and complex as our universe is, God cares about us, each and every one of us. He was willing to destroy it all and start over not because the universe did not love him but because WE didn’t love him, despite all he had done for us.
We are the only part of his creation that has the freewill to love him, and yet we choose not to. We choose to enjoy his creation and the pleasures of our own bodies, but not the God that created them all. We choose not to worship the God that “created man in his own image” and loves us unceasingly. We rejected him.
And yet all along God had a plan. A plan to bring us back to him. This plan was fulfilled through His only Son our Lord Jesus. He came to earth, the vast and amazing earth that he himself had created, and he came to it as a servant. He came to it not as a ruler or king, but as a humble servant. He then died a brutal and unjust death after having been abandoned by everyone. He did this all so that he can have a personal relationship with each and every one of us. So that we might learn to love him through His Spirit. That truly is the wonder of the creation story in my opinion. The fact that our all powerful God would create the universe in its enormity and detail and still above all that he would sacrifice himself simply so that we might be saved and come to love Him.
As we enter this Christmas season let us reflect on our Lord’s power and majesty and that he gave up all of it to become the most lowly among us when he was born to a virgin Mary so many years ago.
Lord we thank you for all that you have done for us and for the gift of your child our Lord. May we ever come to know and love you more and more. Amen
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I never really thought about life as running a 5K. I wasn't able to run more than a mile when i forced myself to work up to that task of running 3.2 miles straight. Something so simple, yet so complex. Just like in my life I have gone through hard times and easy ones too. The training got longer as the goals got harder. And yet no matter what happens, I keep looking to God. Times have been real hard as of late and seem to be so complex, and yet, without God our lives would be nothing. Family and friends are always there to help, but we have to remember to that God is always there to listen. Even when we think that we have made the biggest mistakes in our lives. The past couple months have been real difficult and have often been hard to see God's direction for me. But the more that I stay focused on him, the more confident I feel. After reading this I realize even more that God has a plan for each and every one of us no matter how difficult that it may be. I have angered some people, and have my priorities in an order that they should never be in. And yet I realize that if I continue to trust in the Lord, He will set all my troubles straight. So this Christmas I truly will look at the Lord's power and majesty and continually thank Him for giving me what I have. For we have so much, because if He weren't here, we would have nothing!
I love looking at how complex our bodies are, how so many things go on inside of us to keep us alive. Our blood flows throughout our whole bodies, our digestive system breaks down our food without us knowing it, we breath and our respiratory system takes care of the rest, and we can hear, taste, feel, see, and smell without thinking twice about it. Our universe is so complex, just look at our Earth for example. God put Earth just at the right distance from the sun for it to support life, and if the earth was tilted just a little bit off from where it is now, it could not support life either.
Because of the complexity of life and the beauty of our planet, our life, and our universe, I don't know how anyone could say it was all created by a random natural occurrence. God shows me His beauty, power, and grace everyday by just looking into the sky or at nature.
God provides us all with everything we need here on Earth, yet I take it for granted too much. In addition to sking God to get me through tough times, I need to thank God for what he has given me and praise Him and show Him I need Him even in good times.
I have come to the revelation I can't make it on my own, it took me years and years to realize this, and it is something I need to continually remind myself of everyday. I can only live life happy and free with God leading me.
I 100% agree with Josh...every time I look at the stars or the ocean or mountains or a sunset or think about that fact that pi is this never ending number or about that one ratio that occurs all over the place in nature, I find it very difficult to comprehend how someone could not believe that there is a God behind it. And then of course that leads to thinking about how God created all those majestic things and yet for some crazy reason He still cares about us and our lives and knows each and every one of us so intimately, therefore we have no reason to ever be weary or burdened, but when we are, God offers rest, etc...
But just to play Devil's advocate...this is from a book that I read for one of my classes:
"Over 99 percent of the species that ever walked, flew, or slithered upon this earth are now extinct. This fact alone appears to rule out intelligent design. When we look at the natural world, we see extraordinary complexity, but we do not see optimal design. We see redundancy, regressions, and unnecessary complications; we see bewildering inefficiencies that result in suffering and death. We see flightless birds and snakes with pelvises. We see species of fish, salamanders, and crustaceans that have nonfunctional eyes, because they continiued to evolve in darkness for millions of years. We see whales that produce teeth during fetal development, only to reabsorb them as adults. Such features of our world are utterly mysterious if God created all species of life on earth 'intelligently;' none of them are perplexing in light of evolution. The biologist J.B.S. Haldene is reported to have said that, if there is a God, he has 'an innordinate fondness for beetles.' One would have hoped that an observation this devastating would have closed the book on creationism for all time. The truth is that, while there are now around three hundred and fifty thousand species of beetles, God appears to have an even greater fondness for viruses...Our own bodies testify to the whimsy and incompetence of the creator. As embryos, we produce tails, gill sacs, and a full coat of apelike hair. Happily, most of us lose these charming accessories before birth...Men have a urinary tract that runs directly through the prostate gland. The prostate gland tends to swell throughout life. Consequently, most men over the age of sixty can testift that at least one design on God's green earth leaves much to be desired..."
--Sam Harris in Letter to a Christian Nation
I could go on too...he ranted about "unintelligent design" for awhile. Josh's comment just reminded me of this section for some reason.
sure these are "interseting" points made for evolution. God can do what he wants. I think that too often we try to put him in a box of having to do things a certain way. Why is it so hard to believe that there are hundreds of thousands of beatles and that God wanted them all. Obviously someone was passionate about them enough to observe all of that, so maybe they were put there for that persons amusement...
Just because evolution can or can't be proven to its fullest extent or simply natural selection means nothing to our faith. There are plenty of things out there that point to a creator. Lee Strobel has a great book about all of that actually.
Joseph,
Thanks for visiting my site and leaving your comment. You have a great site. I have often taken my daughter to a park or something, and I show her a lake or a flower, and I say, "The world would have you believe this was just an accident."
Mark
http://mark24609.blogspot.com/
Yes, We are God's creation. An undeserving one and yet He loves us so much that He sent His son to die for us. What a wonderful gift that is. We have Christ, plus all the beautiful things He made and put on the Earth for us. Flowers, trees, birds, mountians, water, clouds, sky, oceans, etc... Praise the Lord for all of the gifts He has given us.
As far as hard times goes, it makes me think, yet again, about C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters and the "troughs" in life we go through. C.S. Lewis says that God uses the troughs to turn us into the type of person her wants us to be. He strengthens our character.
James 1:2-4 "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
Romans 5:3-5 "Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
The hard times are not good and we all go through them and think "How long until this is over?" "Will I make it out of this?" But like you guys said, God will get us through it. Keep looking to Him. And as much as I hate the hard times. I do learn a lot from them. It has taken a long time for me to get some of the things God has taught me, and it is taking time for me to learn the new things He is teaching me. We will never stop learning, but Philippians 4:13 "I can do everything through him who gives me strength."
this is great guys! it will be great to read more as it comes! and its nice to have it for those who need something to read at 2am.
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