What Are ‘the Heavens’?

How Many Galaxies Can You Count in This Picture? - The Atlantic

(Those are galaxies, folks–each one consisting of countless stars.)

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. (Psalm 19: 1-2)

Is the universe just a bunch of nothing? Atoms bumping into other atoms to form molecules, molecules bumping into molecules, no rhyme nor reason to any of it, no active creation involved… “Life,” as we call it, being an illusion.

We teach that in our schools every day. We preach it on TV. We call it Science.

But what if it’s wrong?

God is a Person, and He made us in His image. That’s why we are persons, too. But He also made everything else. Everything in the universe, all the work of His hands.

What if it’s not random? What if the presumed emptiness of “space” only looks that way to us because of our many limitations–and our Science-based presuppositions? What if what we think we “see” is only there because we don’t know how to see? Any stage magician can demonstrate that.

When we view “space” through our newest telescopes, it doesn’t look empty at all. In fact, it looks kind of crowded. The vast emptiness of interstellar space only seems like vast emptiness because we’re so small.

Surely God had a purpose for creating all of it. We don’t know what His purpose was in sowing the heavens with stars, planets, and galaxies. He hasn’t told us. We can never see it as He sees it.

Shouldn’t we stand in awe, reflecting on the Person whose work this is?

And He sent His Son… to us. Here on earth, to us. To win salvation and eternal life–for us.

Christ and all those galaxies go together.

Someday we’ll know how. When we’re wiser.

Bonus Hymn, ‘All Creatures of Our God and King’

I found myself in a kind of odd position, spiritually–thanking God for click beetles. And that sent me in search of this hymn, All Creatures of Our God and King, sung by the Altar of Praise Chorale. It expresses what I’m feeling.

Man, are you out to lunch? Getting all moony over click beetles! [It’s all right, Lord, I’m not listening to them. Thank you for the wonderful works of your hands!]

Tiny White Flowers… vs. Globalists

Tiny White Wild Flowers In Grass In Spring Close Up Stock Photo - Download  Image Now - iStock

This has been a bountiful spring so far. Today I noticed some new wildflowers in the lawn–little tiny white ones. We also have bright purple and bright yellow flowers. The lawnmower cuts them down, but they always come back. I see them as a sign that God is nigh.

Meanwhile in the fallen world, the Great Lockdown has given globalists a taste of absolute power… and they really like it–shutting down churches and interrupting services, forbidding family gatherings, forcing us all to wear masks and stay six feet away from one another, forcing us to receive experimental drugs as vaccines, and censoring us all over the social media: which was set up to give us all a voice, but now they want that voice silenced. Unless, of course, we use it to praise them. That, we’re still allowed to say.

They want their global government, headed by themselves, with the rest of us enjoying only little tastes of freedom doled out sparingly by our overlords.

They appear to have all the power that they need, to do anything they please. And if they can proclaim Critical Race Theory in our schools, our universities, they can teach us to hate and fear each other–which will make it hard to organize any opposition. Everything they do is meant to keep us from getting back together.

But they can’t get rid of all the flowers, can they? Anymore than they can get rid of the God who creates the flowers and gives them life.

He is still here. He is watching. He is the Judge of all the earth, all-powerful, all-wise, all-righteous: even the globalists, these little frauds who want to set themselves on His throne, have only the being that He gives them.

God loves to use the weak to overcome the strong, the foolishness of preaching to overpower the false wisdom of the world, and things that are despised, and things that are not, “to bring to nought things that are” (1 Corinthians 1: 25-28).

The house of the ungodly is founded on unstable sand, and great will be the fall of it.

Mr. Nature: The Mastodon

The Fall of the Carnivorous Mastodon | WIRED

My wife was watching a video about mastodons when I came in from smoking my cigar and doing a crossword puzzle, and it moved me to seek out pictures of this wonderful prehistoric animal.

Jambo! from Mr. Nature. Our safari today takes us nowhere, geographically; but it does take us back in time, to visit with America’s native elephant genus, the mastodon. We are told it was hunted out of existence, by America’s first modern humans, some ten thousand years ago. Take that for what it’s worth: all we know for sure is that there are no more mastodons.

I often wonder–shall we ever see these creatures? They are part of God’s creation, and He has the entire universe at his disposal. In the restoration of all things, will the mastodon be restored, too?

I like to think so.

Birds No Bigger than Bugs

Baby Hummingbirds: Tiny and Cute | Baby Animal Zoo

I’ve never in my life seen a real, live hummingbird–let alone a baby hummingbird. Look how tiny it is!

It’s a beautiful spring day today, sunny and cool. As I sat outside with my cigar, leafing through The Golden Treasury of Natural History, it occurred to me that I had no idea what a baby hummingbird would look like. I soon found plenty of pictures on the Internet.

As Samuel F. B. Morse once said, “What hath God wrought!” No one has ever seen it all; a lifetime of study wouldn’t suffice.

We have more than a lifetime’s worth of Creation to enjoy.

‘A Rat as Big as a Car’ (2014)

We think of rodents as little creatures. But what if you could see a rodent ten feet long, five feet high, and as heavy as a pair of polar bears?

A Rat as Big as a Car

Actually it looks like a capybara, the largest rodent still around today.

See the source image

Josephoartigasia supposedly died out two million years ago, before anyone was around to set out giant mousetraps. All we can say for sure is that we aren’t able to find it anywhere today.

Imagine the size of the exercise wheel you’d need to buy.

God’s Stuff: Luna Moth

Mr. Nature here–and to this day I have never seen a luna moth. I have to settle for video.

Here’s one that got rained on and needs to dry out before it can fly again. Meanwhile, it seems perfectly content to rest on this man’s finger and have its picture taken.

God creates beauty, for His own pleasure and for ours.

(Note: “Lunar” is an error. It’s “luna,” not “lunar.”)

Mr. Nature: One Big Deer

See the source image

Hi, Mr. Nature here again–with one of my favorite artists, Charles R. Knight.

This is his famous painting of Megaloceros, the “Irish Elk,” the deer with the biggest antlers ever. Best known from the Ice Age, there have always been stories of this creature surviving into historical times in Ireland. No one’s been able to prove it, or disprove it.

Ice Age people saw it, though. They hunted it, ate it, and painted its picture on the walls of caves.

This is just one of incalculably many creatures that we can’t find anymore. My own belief is that God, with the whole universe at His disposal, has put them elsewhere. Maybe someday God will let us see these animals again.

I sometimes wonder if He might have given Charles R. Knight a peek at them.

Serenity Break: Seahorses

I think God enjoyed creating seahorses.

Just watch. Let peace wash over you. There will still be seahorses when the Lord regenerates His creation; but there will be a lot of other things for which no place shall anymore be found.

And I don’t think we’ll miss those things.

‘What We Wouldn’t’ve Thought Of, But God Did’ (2015)

Image result for images of lightning bugs

One of my pleasures in the summer is to sit outside with a pipe, in the evening, and watch the lightning bugs. That’s something to be added to the listen of things that God thought of when He was creating the world, but which we never would have thought of, had we been creating it.

https://leeduigon.com/2015/03/15/what-we-wouldntve-thought-of-but-god-did/

Do you even want to imagine a world created by anyone but God?

It gives me the shudders.