Daily Devotions
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all His work that He had done in creation. Genesis 2:1-3
The scientific world is abuzz.
That’s because after ten years of on-again, off-again drilling, Russian scientists have managed to tap into a lake deep under the ice of the Antarctic. They claim those waters have been undisturbed for at least “14 million years.”
But that’s not the big news. The really big news is that these scientists believe they have brought up from Lake Vostok some bacterial DNA, which does not match any known species in the world. To put that in a language all of us can understand, the scientists believe they have discovered some new forms of life.
Wow! That’s a pretty big claim.
It’s also a statement that is pretty misleading.
You see, those life forms aren’t new at all. When God rested on the seventh day of creation, those life forms were in place. That means they aren’t “new”; they are merely new to us.
Still, I guess saying, “We’ve discovered new life forms!” sounds much more impressive than confessing, “Our knowledge of the world in which we live is incredibly incomplete. Things of which we once were sure and certain can be swept aside by a recent discovery, which, quite frankly, was under our noses all along.”
This news story about new life forms is just one more example of how humanity loves to pat itself on the back for being so very, very smart.
And, I suppose, when we compare our knowledge base of today with that of 100, 500, or 1,000 years ago, we are smarter, but when we set everything we know alongside everything the Lord knows, well, there just is no comparison. Speaking by inspiration of the Lord, Isaiah said it better than I ever could: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55: 8-9).
This is why you and I, as redeemed Christians, need to give thanks we have a Lord who, looking at helpless, ignorant sinners, was loving, gracious and smart enough to set into motion a plan through which we could, by the life, death and resurrection of His Son, be forgiven and saved.
And that, dear readers, is a bit of Good News, which should set the world abuzz.
THE PRAYER: Dear Lord I give thanks for Your inspired Word, for in it we find truth, Your truth, everlasting truth. In Jesus’ Name we give thanks. Amen.