God spoke and . . . ............. Parables 731

September 11, 2001

Does an ostrich really hide its head in the sand at the first sign of trouble? If it did, these long-legged birds have an excuse: their eyes are bigger than their brains. If they can see trouble coming, they probably don’t know what to do with it. It could be worse. A starfish, which does hide in the sand, has no brain at all! How do they know what to do to survive?

The amazing animal world sometimes stumps me. How do geese know when or even why they fly south for the winter? At spawning time, how do salmon find their way out of a vast ocean to the very fresh water stream or river where they were born?

Animal instinct might explain geese and salmon but not a particular mother duck. A few weeks ago, a policeman reported that a female duck hurried up beside him and began pulling on his pant cuff. He tried to shoo her away but she persisted. Then she ran to a storm drain, looked down it, and came back to yank on his pants again. He followed her to the drain and found several ducklings had fallen through the grate. Of course they were rescued.

Any attempt to explain it might produce a certain remark from an elderly Christian gentlemen we once knew. With a twinkle in his eye, he’d say, “Isn’t evolution wonderful?”

Evolution says that all creatures are products of a primordial soup plus time plus chance. If that were true, then all geese would have shivered to death unless one of them happened to stumble across a route south, then happened to return for the rest of the flock, and then happened to return the next year.

If salmon spawned by the time-chance theory, they would likely be extinct because their eggs do not survive salt water. One salmon had to have first found fresh water. No, actually two would have to take the trip. Then they had to be both in the same place in the same stream so one could fertilize the eggs of the other.

God as a powerful Creator is more believable. While the story is in Genesis, there is a verse in the New Testament that helps me, but it is often overlooked. Hebrews 11:3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”

I once thought evolution was a good theory until I understood the power of God. He can do anything. He does not need a pollywog to make a frog or an embryo to make a person. He can do or create whatever pleases Him. If He could not, then He would be limited and I could not call Him ‘God’ nor believe that He is Creator.

The other part of that verse from Hebrews says that what we see did not come from visible matter. In other words, God created ex nihilo or from nothing. While He did make the first man from the ‘dust of the ground’ and breathed life into him, He spoke the universe and our world into existence.

We talk about the power of the printed or spoken word but the power of that ‘word’ is astounding. Here is how the Apostle John describes what God did with His word: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . and the Word became flesh, and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

John is talking about Jesus Christ, the Word of God in a human body. He came to earth to reveal God to us. While “the heavens declare the glory of God,” the Lord Jesus Christ makes Him known far more clearly than even His amazing creation.