This week's 'thought' comes to you from John Piper. It is found in his book, "The Pleasures of God," and in this case, the pleasure God has in His creation; a creation He made to display the glory of His wisdom, knowledge and incomparable power. In my opinion it speaks for itself and thus needs no further introduction from me! Enjoy.
Power Without Equal
"It seems in these days that God is enjoying keeping
the astronomers on the edge of their seats with new glimpses of his
power. In the fall of 1989, newspapers reported the discovery, by two Harvard
astronomers, of a 'Great Wall' of galaxies stretching hundreds of millions of
light years across the known universe. The wall is supposedly some five hundred
million light years long, two hundred million light years wide, and
fifteen million light years thick. In case your high school astronomy has grown
fuzzy, a light year is a little less than six trillion (6,000,000,000,000)
miles. This Great Wall consists of more than fifteen thousand
galaxies, each with millions of stars, and was described as the, 'largest
single coherent structure seen so far in nature.'
I say 'was described' because three months later in February of 1990,
God opened another little window for tiny man to marvel again, and
the newspapers reported that astronomers have discovered more than a dozen
evenly distributed clumps of galaxies stretching across vast expanses of
the heavens, suggesting a structure to the universe that is so immense that it
defies current theories of cosmic origins. The newly found pattern of galactic
matter dwarfs the extremely long sheet of galaxies dubbed the 'great wall' (now
written without caps!), that was reported in November 1989 to be the
largest structure in the universe. They now say the great wall is, in fact,
merely one of the closest of these clumps, or regions, that contain very high
concentrations of galaxies...
Or consider the discovery of the Pistol Star (October 8,
1997)...the largest star ever known... 'Try to imagine a star so big that it
would fill all of the solar system within the orbit of Earth, which is 93
million miles from the sun. A star so turbulent that its eruptions would spread
a cloud of gases spanning four light years -- the distance from the sun to the
nearest star (about 24,000,000,000,000 miles). A star so powerful that it glows
with the energy of 10 million suns, making it the brightest ever discovered in
our galaxy, the Milky Way. Actually, a star so big and bright should be
unimaginable, according to some theories of star formation. But here it is,
near the center of the Milky Way' (Star-Tribune, Minneapolis, MN, 8 October
1997, A4).
What then is this universe but the lavish demonstration of the
incredible, incomparable, unimaginable exuberance and wisdom and power and
greatness of God! What a God he must be!...
God rejoices in the works of creation because they point us beyond
themselves to God himself. God means for us to be stunned and awed by his
work of creation. But not for its own sake. He means for us to look at His
creation and say: If the mere work of his fingers (Ps. 8) is so full of wisdom and power and
grandeur and majesty and beauty, what must this God be like himself! These are
but the backside of his glory, as it were, darkly seen through a glass.
What will it be to see the Creator himself? Not his works! A billion
galaxies will not satisfy the human soul. God and God alone is the soul's end.
Jonathan Edwards expressed it like this: 'The enjoyment of God is the
only happiness with which our human souls can be satisfied. To go to
heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most
pleasant accommodations here... [These] are but shadows; but God is the
substance. These are but scattered beams; but God is the sun. These are but
streams; but God is the ocean.'
As the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20: "For since the
creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- His eternal power and divine
nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so
that men are without excuse." That is, without excuse in
terms of believing He exists, and without excuse in terms on the need to fall
down and worship such a glorious Creator.
Let the discoveries of science do what they were meant to do --
amaze us, and leave us speechless, and point us beyond the wonders of creation
to the One who created it all. And then let us heed the words of the
Psalmist -- "Come let us worship and bow down."
With prayers toward that end, Pastor Jeff
