For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. (Romans 1:20 NLT)
God is amazing in so many ways. His glory is indeed all around us.
We can see that glory in each sunrise, which holds new mercies each morning. God didn’t have to make the sunrise beautiful, but He did.
We can see His glory in the stars of night. With the unaided eye, on a good, clear night you may see 2,500 stars. But scientists estimate there is one septillion in the entire known universe. That’s 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars stretching out across 45.7 billion light years.
You can see His glory in the animals He created.
Take for example the nautilus. This is a squid-like creature living in a spiral shell that propels itself backward by shooting out jets of water. As it grows, it makes successively larger compartments for itself and closes off the one it previously occupied. But, it leaves a tube connecting the empty chambers so it can pump water in and out of those chambers so it can float up or sink down as it has need.
And, the amazing part is that the curve of its shell from building all those compartments follows a precise and predictable complex mathematical formula called a fractal. Fractals are present in lightning, leaves, blood vessels, and even mountain ranges.
God left His fingerprints in many places.
One of those fingerprints is Fibonacci numbers which are 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13…etc. It’s a series of numbers where any number in the series is the sum of the two numbers before it. Clearly, this is not a random sequence–but it is present in the arrangement of leaves on the stems of plants, the fruit sprouts of pineapple, the flowering of an artichoke, an uncurling fern and the arrangement of a pine cone.
When Fibonacci numbers are used to draw a spiral, (which mathematicians call “The Golden Spiral”) it looks exactly like a nautilus shell.
God’s glory is also present in animal behavior.
In the Ravi Zacharias book, “Recapture the Wonder” he tells of the Red Knot, a small sandpiper that makes a yearly journey from the very tip of South America to the arctic islands of the Canadian North. At various points along this journey, the Red Knot stops to feed precisely when and where an abundance of food is available. For example, they touch down in Delaware Bay in mid-May exactly when horseshoe crabs are laying millions of eggs.
When they reach their destination north of Hudson Bay, each female lays four speckled eggs. When the chicks hatch, the adults take care of them for a time but by mid-July the chicks have grown large enough to fend for themselves. Then the females leave and the males follow the females back to South America a week later. The chicks stay behind, growing larger and stronger until they finally leave in late August.
Then, with no adults to guide them, the juvenile birds begin their nine-thousand mile journey southward. They know exactly where and when to stop and feed, and they arrive precisely back at their South American destination where they rejoin their parents.
Obviously, such a behavior could never have evolved, even over millions of years, because all of the genetic information guiding these birds would have been lost in the very first failed attempt.
Yes, God gets the glory on His care and love for these birds.
But the greatest glory due God is for the plan of salvation He had for us in his son, Jesus Christ. There is no other belief system on this planet that admits we cannot be what we should be on our own. Only Jesus was willing to die for us to save us.
And to Him belongs all the glory.
Amen.
Today’s Praise
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. (Psalm 19:1-2, NIV)