Ascetics: The Character of God and the Beauty of the Universe - Part 3
Psalm 19:1 “The heavens are telling of the glory of God”
King David was the author of several of the psalms in the Bible. Crafting these poetic verses provided him an avenue for praising God. In this Psalm, David praised God for the creation. In Psalm 19 he declared, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God.” The heavens, inanimate objects, lifeless, soulless, collections of atoms, declare God’s glory. The heavens tell a story. They speak of God’s character. It is not that the stars communicate audibly. Instead, they tell God’s story through their beauty. In telling God’s story, they give testimony to specific, observable attributes of God. God is a God of revelation. He reveals His plans and His purposes. In this case God reveals His glory through the stars. The glory of God speaks of all that God does and all that He is. The heavens declare this about God.
God calls on His creation to speak concerning His plans and purposes. He commands His creation to communicate His attributes. It is not just the stars and galaxies through which God proclaims His beauty and His wisdom. Even the smallest, seemingly most insignificant creatures proclaim God’s glory. The following is an excerpt from Recapture the Wonder by Ravi Zacharias.
The red knot is a sandpiper that each year journeys from the southern tip of South America to the eastern shores of the United States and beyond and then back again. That round-trip expedition, which covers more than eighteen thousand miles every year, takes the red knot through the arctic islands of the Canadian North, making brief “refueling” stops on the beaches of Delaware Bay and Cape Cod.
The birds begin their northward journey in February each year, hundreds of thousands of them, up the coast of Argentina, over Brazil, with periodic stops to feed. From the northern coasts of South America, they take to the air for a nonstop week of soaring above the Atlantic that brings them around mid-May to touch ground on the marshy shore of Delaware Bay at the very time horseshoe crabs are laying their eggs by the millions. When you consider that during their sojourn in Delaware each red knot might consume 135,000 horseshoe crab eggs, you know they need that stop and time it perfectly. Plumped up for the remainder of their marathon across the vast Canadian terrain, they make their final stop north of Hudson Bay. There, in ideal northern summer conditions, they mate and breed, each female laying four speckled eggs, which she and her mate take turns incubating.
Baby red knots build up their bodies soon with the feathers growing fairly rapidly. There is an incredibly scripted schedule for everything in the process. By mid-July, the females leave the males and their offspring, and start heading south again. The males leave almost exactly one week later. The little ones fend for themselves and then, in late August, they commence their nine-thousand-mile journey to Tierra del Fuego. They begin that flight, their first of such magnitude, without parental companionship. Somehow, with a precise “destination” in mind, as if equipped by flawless radar and instruction, they make their way from northern Canada along the eastern American coast and across the Atlantic to Guyana, Surinam, knowing precisely where to make their sojourns for food. And then, in what appears like a dated and timed appointment, “coming in on a beam,” they rejoin the family at Tierra del Fuego for the southern summer.
Here, on the balmy beaches of Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America, they feast, fattening themselves. A long molt and ideal temperatures combine to replace their beaten feathers so that they are ready for the long journey back north. What it takes a whole crew of highly skilled men and women at a pit stop in the Indianapolis 500 or a coterie of mechanics and ground staff to get a plane ready for its return flight, the red knot does by its own wit and understanding of natural resources.
The heavens declare the glory of God. So do the birds. What attributes of God do we see in the red knot? At minimum, we see the wisdom of God and the grandeur of God in the intricate details of the universe. We see the reflection of His omniscience and His continual presence in every atom of the universe, all communicated in this remarkable flight. The red knot’s migratory patterns function as a prism through which we observe the remarkable plan and design of God in His creation. I have observed this in a similar pattern of the migratory flight of the monarch butterfly. Every year the monarch butterfly population migrates north for the summer and south for the winter. During the summer they can be seen all over North America. In the fall, they return thousands of miles to the same monarch reserves in western and central Mexico. Amazingly, none of the butterflies make the round trip. The life span of the butterfly is far too short. The butterfly population returns to nesting sites and not one of them is a repeat customer. All of these delicate insect travelers make one and only one trip. Incredibly, some even travel from the southern tip of Florida across the Gulf of Mexico in order to arrive at their destination. Imagine, butterflies traversing the Gulf of Mexico. How do they find the right place? No evolutionary explanation can effectively answer this question. None of them have ever been there previously. Who is guiding these fragile creatures to these locations? God guides them for the purpose of demonstrating His wisdom and design in nature. Examples like this from nature are legion. Everywhere we look we see God’s handiwork in His creation.
~ Daniel