Telescopic and Microscopic . . .

Note: I haven't forgotten to post Darkness and Light – Part II. I just felt led to do this first.

Yesterday we were blessed to be able to take our girls to the beach in Cambria for a family day as summer draws to a close. One of my favorite things to do there is to lay on the "pebbly" beach and sort through the tiny rocks, marveling at the amazing colors and patterns and complexity in rocks so small you can barely hold them. Truly, if you don't actually lay down and get your nose next to the ground, you wouldn't even notice them.

One of my other favorite things to do is to browse the Hubble Space Telescope web site (see my November 12, 2009 post As High as the Heavens . . .) and download new pictures. Then I like to zoom in farther and farther in to them and be amazed at the stars (and galaxies!) that are but a dot in the picture . . . knowing the picture itself is but a dot in the sky.

Either way—microscopically looking at smaller and smaller details in already tiny rocks, or telescopically looking at more and more details in photographs of deep space—it is amazing to me how majestic and powerful and complex our Creator is. He is truly, beyond all else, worthy of our worship and praise and awe. I am struck as I look at the details, from a scale so grand I can't even fathom the numbers used to describe it, to a scale so small I need microscopes to appreciate it, that this is the God I have trusted my life to . . . and I know I am in good and capable hands.

I have shared two photo "journeys" with you below so that you can share a little of this with me. The first is from a photograph I took yesterday of a tiny part of the beach. The second is from the Hubble, showing star cluster NGC 265. In both cases, the white box inside the picture shows the area the image to the right of it is zoomed in on (i.e., the middle black box is the area inside the white square on the left, and the far right black box is the area inside the white square in the middle picture). Whether looking a pebbles on the sand at a tinier and tinier lever, or going deeper and deeper into an increasingly narrow slice of space, isn't our God  truly wonderful, amazing, magnificent, awe inspiring . . . indescribable?

Click on image to enlarge.

Click on image to enlarge.

Darkness and Light — Part I

Yesterday we went to the east side of the Pinnacles National Monument with our youth group. It was a really special day. We got there a little after 10 am, and then hiked up through the natural caves created by large rocks covering parts of a canyon. At the top we stopped and did a little study by a small reservoir and then came back down for lunch and heading home.

At the top, for our study, I began by asking the youth what they could turn on in the dark parts of the cave to help them. The answer was their flashlights, or "light." I then asked what might happen if they walked in the dark without their light and we came up with answers like falling, getting hurt, getting lost, dying, etc. I then asked them, as we sat out in the beautiful sun, to turn on the dark. The blank looks said it all—you don't turn on dark, you just remove light and what is left is dark. Dark is the absence of light. Remember that for what follows . . .

When Jesus came Matthew 4:12-17 tells us He fulfilled Isaiah's prophecy that the people who live in great darkness have seen a great light. In Luke 1:78-79, Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, filled by the Holy Spirit, prophesied, "because of the tender mercy of our God, whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." [boldface is mine]

I asked the youth what the land was like when Jesus came, and the answer, according to the Bible, was that it was in darkness. So, I asked, does that mean the sun wasn't shining? Obviously, the answer is "no." This is a description of spiritual darkness, and based on what we talked about to start—darkness is the absence of light. Who is the light of the world? Jesus. The people lived in a spiritual darkness, absent of God (they had plenty of religion, just not God).

Light and dark are big words in the Bible. In the English Standard Version there are 88 different uses of a variation of the word "light" or "dark" in the Gospels, alone—and almost all of them have to do with light in the sense of illumination, not weight. If it is true that darkness, in a spiritual sense, is the absence of God, then we would expect to find Hell described like that. Sure enough, in multiple places, it is the place of "outer darkness." To the contrary, if God is light and light chases away darkness, then we would expect to find Heaven a place of tremendous light. Hence the words of Revelation 21:22-25, "And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there." [again, boldface is mine]

So, darkness is the natural state without the addition of light. When we walk in darkness we get lost, hurt, and even die. This is the condition of man until the light comes in and shines in the darkness. I'll talk more about darkness and light and walking in them in the next post, but for this one simply reflect on the fact that, absent of light there is darkness. It is the natural condition. You don't need to do anything to make it dark. You do need to apply light to remove the darkness. So many people who don't know Jesus seem to believe that they are on a road and one day they have to choose Heaven or Hell, God or not. The reality is that all are on the road to Hell. It is not one we choose. It is our natural path. We are all absent of God and in the darkness. We must choose to apply the light to get out of the darkness, and that light has a name. It is not some mystical idea of "light" or "God." It is Jesus who said, "I am the light of the world."

Some Changes to the Blog

I have made some significant changes to my blog's layout. If you get new posts via an email subscription you won't see them so I wanted to make a post letting you know. You can click on the link at the bottom of your email titled "A Great God and Good Coffee."

1) I have changed the header image. In case you are wondering, the two pictures are from our homeschool field trip in March to Carrizo Plains National Monument, near California Valley.

2) I have utilized Blogger's feature where a blog author can add different pages to their blog. I did this trying to clean up the right column, and to be able to share more information that might be of interest to readers (especially ones who know me or my family personally, or who want to learn more about the blog or who I am).

The pages I have added are found in tabs/links below the header image. They include an About the Blog page, an About Me page, a page of different pictures, a page describing different ways to follow the blog, a page telling how to make comments on posts on the blog, a link to the blog's home page, and a disclaimer clarifying that this is my personal blog and not something I am doing as True Life's pastor (got to love the tax laws!).

I have also changed the delivery time of email subscriptions from early morning to between 3 and 5 pm.

Thanks so much for your interest in my blog. I value each reader, and I am blessed by the feedback I get in comments, through private emails, and in person about different times posts have blessed someone's life. It is truly a joy to know God is using this to touch others!

What Came First, the Chicken, the Egg . . . or God?

Foxnews.com recently posted an article titled, "Chicken-and-Egg Mystery Finally Cracked." In that article it says, "British scientists believe they have found the answer to an ages-old question: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Scientists cracked the puzzle after discovering that the formation of eggs is possible only thanks to a protein found in chicken's ovaries. That means eggs have to be formed in chickens first."

The article then talks in specific about the protein they found (ovocledidin-17, or OC-17), and then continues, "They used a supercomputer to zoom in on the formation of an egg and realized the protein is vital in kick-starting the crystallization process. It works by converting calcium carbonate into the calcite crystals that make up the egg shell. Dr Colin Freeman, from Sheffield University's Department of Engineering Materials, said 'it had long been suspected that the egg came first—but now we have the scientific proof that shows that in fact the chicken came first.' "

Hmmm. Kind of sounds a little like Gen 1:24-25 in which God records Creation and says: And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. [boldface added by me]

If you read my blog with any regularity you know that I hound on the fact that we must be convinced of the truth of God's Word, cover to cover, word to word, idea to idea, promise to promise. I equate the devil's efforts to undermine our confidence in God's Word to splitting wood by hand. If you have a large round and you want to take it apart you don't put the wedge in the strongest, toughest part or the core of the round. You look for the cracks and weak points, put the wedge there, and then split toward the strongest points.

Likewise, the devil is like that. He doesn't care how he gets you to begin to doubt God's Word. Likely it won't be with John 3:16, but rather with Genesis chapters 1 and 2, or with the account of Noah's Ark and the flood, or with a promise of God you don't see manifested in your life. However he gets in ("Did God really say . . ."), it will probably be a weak spot in your faith, and from there he will gradually erode your confidence in God's Word back to God's love or the Gospel itself, and probably at a time you most need to know it is true in your heart.

Genesis 1 and 2 are one of the greatest entry points of doubt for our youth in America. From elementary school on they are taught faulty science in contradiction to it, and they are made to feel like fools for believing in it as they get in to higher education. Once they doubt it, they begin to doubt the rest, and soon they doubt the relevance of God at all in their life—causing an exodus from the church among young people. (For a fascinating and sad look at this read Already Gone by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer.)

One of the saddest parts of this is that there is no reason for it. If you have studied scientific defenses of Genesis, or read my posts about our visit by Dr. Rick Oliver from Confound the Wise Ministries (see links below), you will know that science is only further and further coming to find evidence for God's account of Creation—it's just that they aren't allowed to talk about it. I will never forget a kind man in our area, who is very sharp, once telling me that he found it hard to believe he could have an intelligent conversation with me since I believed in the literal Creation account of Genesis. I understand his comment because the word of the scientific evidence (in all fields of science) confirming Creation is having trouble getting to those not already convinced of Genesis.

But . . . then . . . we get articles about chickens and eggs . . . and for those of us willing to recognize it as such, we see, once again, how true God's Word is, has been, and always will be.

Links to Posts about visits with Dr. Rick Oliver:
A Blessed Time: Part I (May 12, 2010)
A Blessed Time: Part II (May 14, 2010)
Fossils, Fishing, and Faith (May 21, 2009)

Rick and Susan's Ministry: Confound the Wise