The Wonderful Works of God

STOP and CONSIDER CAREFULLY the Wonderful Works of GOD

(Source Materials: w01 4/15 p. 3, g95 11/22 p. 8-10, ct-E)

Maybe, you’ve seen some of the wonderful works in pictures or in one exhibit in a museum. How did you feel when you stop and look at them?

However, even if these things are wonderful, they have no connection to our life.

Happily, there are wonderful works that, surely, have connection and value to us.

Did you ever tried to stop and consider carefully the wonderful works of God?

Bear with me now, because here, I will try to consider carefully the wonderful works of God.

Maybe, you will ask: But why? I have many concerns in life—health, financial security, the future, my family, my co-worker, my neighbors, so why do I still need to consider carefully the works of God?

What should be my purpose in meditating upon the wonderful works of God?

King David answered this question.

How Did Our Universe Get Here?

Astronauts thrill to photograph the earth as it looms large through the window of a spacecraft. “That’s the best part of flying in space,” said one. But our earth seems very small when compared with the solar system. The sun could hold a million earths inside, with room to spare! However, could such facts about the universe have any bearing on our life and its meaning?

Let us take a brief mental trip into space to see our earth and sun in perspective. Our sun is just one of an awesome number of stars in a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is just a tiny part of the universe.

The Milky Way galaxy is some 600 quadrillion miles in diameter—yes, 600,000,000,000,000,000 miles! It takes light 100,000 years to cross it, and this one galaxy contains over 100 billion stars!

Our universe contains at least 50 billion galaxies, each with billions of stars like our sun. And they are all in motion.

Many scientists, uncomfortable with the idea that the universe was created by a higher intelligence, speculate that by some mechanism it created itself out of nothing. Does that sound reasonable to you?

Believe only what you see?

Many rational people accept the existence of things they cannot see. Related evidence—not direct observation—was an adequate basis for scientists to accept what was yet invisible.

On similar basis, I believe in a Creator I do not see because of related evidence—his wonderful works.

The Earth—Gift from God for Us

Let’s stop and consider carefully our earth?

For one, consider the earth’s measurements and its position relative to the rest of our solar system.

Listen to these humbling questions:

Our earth is just the right size for our existence. In what sense? If earth were slightly larger, its gravity would be stronger and hydrogen, a light gas, would collect, being unable to escape the earth’s gravity. Thus, the atmosphere would be inhospitable to life. On the other hand, if our earth were slightly smaller, life-sustaining oxygen would escape and surface water would evaporate. In either case, we could not live.

The earth is also at an ideal distance from the sun, a factor vital for life to thrive. Had the earth been situated only 5% closer to the sun, a runaway greenhouse effect [overheating of the earth] would have occurred. If, on the other hand, the earth were placed only 1% further from the sun, runaway glaciation [huge sheets of ice covering much of the globe] would have occurred.

To the above precision, you can add the fact that the earth rotates on its axis once a day, the right speed to produce moderate temperatures. Venus takes 243 days to rotate. Just think if the earth took as long! We could not survive the extreme temperatures resulting from such long days and nights.

Another vital detail is our earth’s path around the sun. Comets have a wide elliptic path. Thankfully, this is not so with the earth. Its orbit is almost circular. Again, this prevents us from experiencing death-dealing extremes of temperature.