When American Pastor Andy Cook was in China, he found that many had come to believe in the existence of God without ever hearing of Christianity or of Jesus. They had even come to a vague understanding that God is a loving God simply because of the provision of food and water, as well as through recognising just how beautiful this world is. Upon hearing the Christian message, an old woman told him: “I’ve known him for years. I just didn’t know his name.”
Have we stopped to consider the beauty of the world around us? All of creation, you and I included, points to one person — the Creator.
ARE YOU LOOKING?
One Sunday at church, the guest speaker opened his sermon with a prayer. It was a prayer unlike any I (Isabel) had heard before. His prayer went something like this:
Dear God, there is none like You. Thank You for creating me. Thank You for giving me the ability to clasp my hands together as I speak to You. To do that, You created within my hands the key gripping muscles — the flexor digitorum profundus, the flexor digiti minimi, the flexor pollicis longus, and the lexor digitorum superficialis — just to name a few. Thank You also for the three necessary intrinsic muscles — the adductor pollicis, the interossei and the lumbricals.
As he prayed and thanked God for creating all the little muscles hidden beneath my skin, I was, to say the least, completely MINDBLOWN! I had never really known the complexity of the various parts and functions of the human anatomy. Having all these muscles named and described made me realise how intricate the body is. My only response to his prayer was, “WOW, God!” We live in a world that is beautifully and intricately designed, yet we manage to live ignorant of the grand Artist. When we study the sciences, languages, and the arts, God is rarely mentioned. Not only does our education not mention God, most of our schooling also rejects the idea that God created the earth. In fact, my (Hannah) professor (and many others) refers to the belief that God created the world as a ‘creation myth’! With God pushed out of the picture, it becomes so normal for us to walk past all of God’s creation and be unaware of the glory of God that nature testifies to.
CONSIDERING CREATION
While our formal education teaches us one way to perceive nature (without God in the picture), we can look to the Bible to teach us another way as well! Psalm 8 was beautifully penned by King David as he thought about nature. He says, “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps 8:3–4). As he contemplated creation, he gained a deep revelation of who God is — a big God who cares even for the smallest of creation.
All we need to do is what King David did: he considered the work of God’s hands. Before you continue reading, take a look around you! Consider the ecosystems set in place, the pattern of your fingerprints, or the vastness of the sky. God’s beauty is all around us. How on earth (pun intended) did we manage to miss the Creator?
A potential answer could be this: We have been too busy. The truth is, busyness and hurry are great distractions that the enemy uses so that our attention will be focused on something other than God. What if we chose to simply dwell amidst the creation of God and ask Him to reveal Himself to us through what He has made? What would we discover about God?
I (Dorothea) was at a weekend retreat, where we were challenged to wake up early and spend some time alone with God. I accepted the challenge and woke up before dawn, finally settling at a quiet spot on the Changi Beach boardwalk.
It was 6 a.m.; I lay on my back and looked up — the skies were a swirl of dusty blues and reds — an invitation to the impending dawn. Every couple of minutes, the sky I beheld was different from before; the mix of blue, crimson, and pink danced across the sky. My ears picked up the melodious cooing of birds in the distance. Every once in a while, a gust of wind would carry with it the gentle rustling of leaves.
HOW ON EARTH DID WE MANAGE TO MISS THE CREATOR?
I sat up and faced the sea that was before me. Amidst the vastness of the sea, a small white dot of a boat was bobbing up and down in sync with the waves. The waves crashed against the rocks that littered the contours of the shore — the still morning air was not so silent anymore.
It was 7 a.m.; the earth was slowly rousing from her sleep and coming alive. I was left breathless in wonder at the intricacies of nature coming together so beautifully in the early hours of the morning.
I could relate to how King David felt when he considered the heavens and the work of God’s hands. In that one hour at Changi Beach, everything around me pointed me to our Creator God — I was left astounded at His greatness and humbled at my existence.
GOD IS REVEALED!
Throughout history, man has turned to various means — astrology, philosophy, and the natural sciences — in search of the great mysteries of the earth. I (Hannah) do not claim to be a great scientist or the most sophisticated thinker, but I do believe that we don’t need to look very far to discover God. He is not a God that hides, but a God that desires to be revealed to the ones He created. Just like the people in China that Andy Cook met, perhaps it is a humble awe of creation that will lead many to realise that God is the great and glorious Creator. May we be people that live aware of the beauty around us, ready to testify of the One who is beauty personified to the highest degree.
