As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. (Ecclesiastes 11:5)
Solomon,
the author of Ecclesiastes, reigned as the king of Israel from about 970 to 931
BC. It’s 2023. There have been some advances in science over the past nearly
3000 years. We now have computers and other equipment that allow scientists to investigate
the path of the wind and how the body is formed in a mother’s womb. We tend to
think we have those issued covered, and therefore that we do, can, or should
understand the work of God, the Maker of all things. In fact, at least many
scientists and those who accept their word as the gospel claim that there is no
God whose work can be understood.
That’s
what we think. But for the last two summers, I’ve been paying a little more
attention to weather forecasts. I live in hope of decent rain showers, so I don’t
have to water my garden. Time after time, the scientists and their computer
models tell us rain is coming, and while someone in the area might get it, somehow
it misses my yard. It’s almost a standard that if the meteorologist predicts
something, something else happens.
The
same is pretty much the case with Human bodies forming in wombs. We claim we
know what’s happening but think nothing of aborting those bodies based on the
idea that they’re just clumps of cells or that they can’t feel any pain until some
certain age, or that they aren’t people until the mater familias declares them
to be people and accepts them.
So,
for all our technology and advances in science, I’m not sure we’ve actually
come to understand them any better even though we like to think we have. For
all we (or I) think we’ve advanced in our understanding of God (and we may
have!), especially in any specific instance, we’re probably fooling ourselves.
This
morning, I read a devotional that uses stories about animals as its theme. A
woman heard noises under her porch, and she and her neighbor set up a motion
sensitive camera to see what was making the noise. Then the woman put out a can
of tuna. The woman’s husband knew nothing of this and let their dog out, and the
dog enjoyed the tuna. So did several other animals. The conclusion drawn by the
writer was that sometimes we go into things with plans of doing this or that, while
God’s plan seems to have been to draw the writer and her neighbors closer
thought their shared anticipation of the experiment, their enjoyment of nature,
and their humor as the plan’s faulty execution unfolded.
What this all means is that it’s a mistake to think too much of our understanding of nature… or God. We make understand basics, but that is barely the first step. We have miles to go before we get it right. That doesn't mean "give up." It means "Let's get started."
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