Thursday, January 20, 2016
The heavens proclaim the glory of God.
The skies display his craftsmanship.
Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
They speak without a sound or word;
their voice is never heard.
Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
and their words to all the world.
Day after day they continue to speak;
night after night they make him known.
They speak without a sound or word;
their voice is never heard.
Yet their message has gone throughout the earth,
and their words to all the world.
Psalm 19:1-4(NLT)
I am reminded every time I
look at a clear, starry night sky, or a breathtaking view of a valley and its’
mountainous vistas that God rarely (if ever) plays our silly games.
You have perhaps seen, or
heard about someone challenging God: alright,
you, God; if you’re there I dare you to strike me dead right now! And then, when he or she didn’t become a
piece of dry toast because the lightning bolt never happened, they claim
victory – God isn’t there; it’s all a hoax.
The kindest thing you might
be able to offer about that kind of foolishness is to say nothing at all. At the very most you might remind the person
that an argument from silence is weak; just because God didn’t strike you dead –
as you asked – doesn’t mean He doesn’t exist; it simply means He doesn’t grant
the prayers of foolish noodle heads!
And – at times – we’re ALL
foolish noodle heads! We all pray for
stuff that isn’t good for us, or things we don’t need. If God did answer some of my prayers I might
wind up as toast simply because, like the rest of humanity, I’m selfish and self-destructive.
The Psalmist, King David,
stated it clearly and forcefully that God’s creation is an argument from
silence, declaring the magnificence of God’s sovereign hand. Without a single word the creation speaks to
our hearts, awesomely overwhelming our imaginations.
And with good reason!
Even the closest star past
our sun, named Proxima Centauri, is 4¼ light years from earth. I asked Google to calculate the number of
miles in one light year (how far light will travel in a year’s time). Siri said it’s 5,878,499,814,210.01
miles! (Add an extra 1.6 million miles
in a leap year!). So, just travelling
from where you’re sitting now to the closest star in the universe is about 25 trillion
miles.
If you feel good about
extending your road trip past Proxima Centauri to visit all the other stars in
the universe, you’ll have to travel quite a way. Scientists estimate the number of stars in
God’s universe to be something like 3 x 1023. That’s 3,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or three-billion-trillion
stars besides the Milky Way, which is our little neighborhood.
And every bit of it
declaring the majesty of Yahweh! I’d
call that a pretty strong argument from silence!
Now, that’s a pretty long
way to travel this morning to set up my one-sentence I started out to say:
The next time you feel
overwhelmed by all that the current political campaigns are declaring as our
great problems, or hear a newscaster re-tell the story of another shooting on
the news, or have a panic attack about global climate change, please be silent
for a moment and remember who holds all of that, and all of the universe in the
palm of His hand.
For You Today
Neither you, nor I hold the
answers to all the perplexing problems we face in our little world – nor is it
likely to come out of Washington this November.
But we do know from whence cometh our help – look up; your redemption
draweth nigh![2]
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