Day 2: God’s Infinite Word

His Infinite Word, manifested in creation, reveals His glory.

God prepared the created world to point us back to Him. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” Psalm 19 says.

The more we come to know and understand about the created world, often referred to as God’s general revelation to mankind, the more we understand the character of its Creator.

In modern times, the astonishing growth of knowledge of this general revelation allows us to appreciate more the One who reveals Himself in Scripture—God’s special revelation. Yet, we need spiritual eyes to see this.

Our Expanding Knowledge of Creation

The divinity of the Infinite Word is revealed in the prolific patterns, designs, complexities, and beauties of creation.

In recent decades, thanks to developments in technology, we have seen immeasurably more than anyone could have imagined a century (or more) ago. And the extent of our knowledge about the natural world continues to expand rapidly.

We could devote our lives to studying these patterns and never plumb their depths fully—nor the amazing grace and majesty of the One who made them!

The Macrocosm, Midicosm, and Microcosm

God’s Infinite Word is manifested at all levels of the physical universe: the macrocosm, midicosm, and microcosm.

Midicosm

Let’s start with the human scale or the midicosm. This is the realm we are most familiar with. Though familiar, it is exceptional. The arena of the foot, the inch, and the handsbreadth comprises a tiny slice of our universe. Even here, however, the complexity is dazzling.

As an example, a male Japanese pufferfish is unusually dull and unremarkable. To compensate for this dullness and find a mate, he uses his head and fins and shells from the ocean floor to plow the sand, break up the seabed into fine particles that can be reshaped into ridges and valleys, and ultimately create an intricate, geometric nest.

As a pufferfish works on this nest—24 hours a day for 7 days—he must fight the oceanic current that tries to destroy his creation. The fish never rises up or pauses to see what he is making. Nevertheless, he produces a perfectly symmetrical design in a way that defies imagination.*

Why would a creature do that, other than because of the tremendous care and intelligence of its Designer? Its embedded instincts and knowledge create something so elegant, yet so easily overlooked ... and it is not the only living being with such inborn natures; it’s one of thousands, even millions!

Microcosm

If we delve down to the microcosm, we see how incredibly complex and ordered the universe is even at the microscopic level.

Consider the cell, the building block of life. As molecular biologist Michael Behe explains in Darwin’s Black Box, Charles Darwin thought cells were just simple blobs, or “black boxes.” Over time, however, innovative methods of X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance have shown how wrong Darwin was. Even one cell is exquisitely elegant—more complex than a major city. Humans, through engineering and technology, have never been able to design anything remotely similar to the complexity of a single cell.

Passing through the space of cells to the level of the micrometer—the smallest scale visible with an optical microscope—we’re dealing with unicellular organisms like E. Coli, and other bacteria. Yet, even these are each a high-tech factory, with amazing capacities and built-in processes.

As we progress further down through the structures of life, things become more and more mysterious, almost to the point of abstraction at the level of atoms, protons, electrons, and neutrons.

Macrocosm

Zooming out to the level of our human scale and beyond—the macrocosm—we find that the universe expands beyond our capacity to easily grasp. Humans have only crossed the expanse between the earth and the moon a few times. The distance from Earth to the sun far exceeds that of Earth to its moon.

Zooming farther out, the sun is utterly dwarfed by more massive stars as we head toward the Kuiper Belt and galaxies beyond it. At this distance, the level of scale is virtually inconceivable.

Earth sits within the galactic habitable zone of the Milky Way, a band that comprises about 4% of the galaxy. Any farther out, or any closer to the center of the galaxy, and we would not be able to live on this planet; this is part of why it’s been dubbed the “privileged planet.”

Earth also sits within the Sagittarius Arm of the Milky Way, and as such is perfectly placed to avoid most of the interstellar dust in the galaxy. As a result, we have the perfect portal to look outside our galaxy and observe the glory of God.

Everything Points to Him

The complexity and interdependency of the structures that sustain life are extremely intricate. It’s now impossible to claim (with any integrity) that all of this is an accident.

Even though the burden of our culture demands, “Show me why you’re a theist,” scientific discoveries would say, “Why wouldn’t you be a theist if you analyze the implications of everything you see?”

Mystery abounds at all levels of creation, exponentially revealing the grandeur of God in His Infinite Word.

*Pufferfish example taken from Life Story, episode 5, “Courtship,” executive producer Michael Gunton, narrated by David Attenborough, aired November 20, 2014, on BBC One.

Day 2 Scripture Readings:

Psalm 19:1
Romans 1:20
Revelation 4:11
Isaiah 40:26