Did you know God signed his creation? As we talked about in my last post, the Bible tells us God put so much of himself into his creation, that viewing it leaves man no excuse for ignoring God. Did you take your children out into nature? Did you find God there? What qualities of God were you and your children able to find in God’s handiwork?
As I reflected on what I learned about God from looking at the amazing beauty of His creation, I thought of at least five things nature teaches me about God:
1. The intricacy of creation points to God. Even atheist scientists are becoming more and more aware random chance cannot account for the incredible intricacy in everything God created. (Mind you, those scientists are still avoiding admitting God was involved.) As God allows man to develop more sophisticated equipment, the equipment points scientists back to God. The odds of random chance would be so incredibly high, the word “impossible” is an understatement! Get a cheap microscope and show your children the amazing detail in the simplest of things. If you really want to blow their minds, borrow a picture book from the library showing things like the eye of a fly seen through incredibly powerful microscopes. Do those photos point you to chance? To man? Or as God meant them to do, back to God?
2. The awesome power of creation points us back to God. If you travel or live near some of the powerful parts of creation, please take your children to experience them (taking safety precautions of course!). An active volcano, the ocean during a storm, the winds of a tropical storm amaze all who seem them. Go online and learn about the power of our sun or the other sun/stars in the universe. All of them point us to God and his amazing power.
3. The amazing creativity of creation shows us not only what an artist God is, but how much he must want to bring us joy. Aquariums, zoos, botanical gardens, snorkeling on reefs of tropical fish and much more never cease to amaze me with the infinite variety of God’s creation. Let’s face it, God could just have easily said “fish” and every fish would come out looking like a catfish. It would still be amazing, but God went wild with creativity, joy and humor. Seriously, look up every kind of fish there is. Colors, patterns, joy and humor are what you will find. Animals, plants – even planets and stars – reflect the same variety, joy, creativity and even humor. All point us back to God and the creative, loving God he is.
4. God’s creation shows his personal interest in each of us. The Bible tells us he knows when something happens to anything in his creation and that he even knows the number of hairs on our heads. (Granted for some, that’s not too hard, but for most of us it would be tough!). Did you know that each giraffe has a different pattern of spots? God didn’t have to do that. He could have created every giraffe to be exactly alike. He knew though that mother giraffes would need to recognize their young and made each giraffe with different spot patterns. If God cares enough to change spot patterns so mother giraffes can care better for their young, how much personal interest must he have in us? He created us in his image and gave us souls – I would say he definitely shows an amazing personal interest in each one of us!
5. God knows his creation so intimately, he put clues in the Bible about various aspects of his creation that man would not discover until thousands of years later. He knew when man realized God was telling the writers of the scriptures to write them down, the truths would later point us back to God. Matthew Fontaine Murray was injured in the 1800’s. While he was recovering, he asked his daughter to read to him from the Bible. As she read to him from Psalms, he noticed a verse (8:8) that caught his attention. God mentioned the paths of the sea. Murray took the scripture and started analyzing the data from various ships logs. The patterns emerged and Murray wrote important oceanography books about currents (sea paths) and winds that sailors used for many years. Yet God had the psalmist write about them thousands of years earlier! Only the creator would know such intimate details about his creation. Read Job chapter 38 with your children. God was making another point to Job, but I have always loved the pictures of creation God paints for Job in this chapter.
Take advantage of the beautiful ways God gave us to point our children towards God. Share God’s creation with them and teach them the lessons it tells us about God. God created things for us to use to point our children back to God. What a blessing that it is also such an enjoyable way to teach them! What else do you and your children think creation teaches us about God? Please share your thoughts in a comment below.