Archive Poster : January 2015
Isaac Newton Discovered Gravity.
God Invented It
Isaac Newton discovered gravity! Okay. So 'discovered' may not be the perfect word. Whoever dropped the first hammer (or rock!) on their toe probably gets that honour.
But any person living on Planet Earth knows that objects fall to the ground. And 'discovering' gravity can be a painful lesson that's best learnt at an early age and nowhere near a top story window. But just what is gravity? What makes it happen? Great thinkers have tried to understand what laws or principles, if any, lie behind the phenomenon. But in 1686 it was Isaac Newton, who rightly explained that all objects, no matter how small or big, have gravitational pull. Because our Earth is so big, Newton argued, its gravitational pull is much stronger making the pull of small objects, like a grain of sand, less obvious.
However just explaining how something works doesn't account for its existence. The existence of anything at all is the great mystery. In fact 'Existence' is the really hard question. Why is there anything? How is it that anything at all exists? One of the temptations with the scientific movement is to assume that because we're getting better at understanding how things work, that we can know why they exist. But there really isn't any necessary connection. Knowing more and more about how things work won't necessarily lead us to know why the universe exists.
The best explanation for why it does exist comes from the maker of everything - God. The start of the Bible contains a simple and matter of fact description. It simply says, 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.'
If you wonder at a world that is intimate yet majestic, beautiful but cruel, complex and yet so ordered then you are pondering on the imagination of God. You're marvelling at the creative faculties of the maker of the universe. As each year passes we thrill to the discovery of new facts about the world we live in. But the greater thrill is to discover the mind and person of the one who brought such laws and principles into being. Great scientific pioneers who have shown us how things work are certainly worthy of praise, but the God who made the very things we wonder at, He is the one who deserves most praise.
So, get to know your maker. Read the Bible and discover the thoughts of the one who created all you can see. If you do, you'll discover God's greatest concern is that you get to know His dear son, Jesus Christ. And Jesus promises that by coming to Him, you will come to know God himself.
Prayer: Dear God, I praise you for your wisdom and power in making the world the way that you have. Help me to get to know you through Jesus.
Verse: 'In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.' Genesis 1:1
