wonderful plan

God designed everything. I know that, but sometimes I think I don’t really understand it.

I tend to think of God creating nature. I think of him making the world at Adam lived in, with all the plants and animals. But I sometimes think that there are a lot of discoveries, a lot of things we know how to do now, that we came up with ourselves.

I’m rethinking that after reading from Isaiah 28. There’s a passage in the middle of this chapter that describes a farmer doing his work, plowing and leveling the surface, sowing his seeds, caring for the crop. Then it says, in verses 26 to 29, “His God instructs him and teaches him the right way. Caraway is not threshed with a sledge, nor is the wheel of a cart rolled over cumin; caraway is beaten out with a rod, and cumin with a stick. Grain must be ground to make bread; so one does not go on threshing it forever. The wheels of a threshing cart may be rolled over it, but one does not use horses to grind grain. All this also comes from the Lord Almighty, whose plan is wonderful, whose wisdom is magnificent.”

If God worked out the best ways to farm and showed them to us, or led us to discover them, then it follows that this pattern of hidden knowledge that we seek out is one way God reveals himself. All of scientific discovery and innovative engineering is a continuation of his teaching.

That means, since God filled the earth with minerals and chemicals, and designed all the principles of physics, and made us with inquiring minds and a desire to know the truth about the world, that skyscrapers and interstate highways and gigantic ships are just as much his creation as trees and birds.

God created all of it. Every man-made thing follows God’s laws as surely as if he handed the plans directly, like he did with Noah’s ark and the first temple of Israel.

All good things come from God. When we make good things, we honor God and reflect his image. When we make evil things, we simply distort something good God already designed.

Satan is a destroyer; he never created anything. It’s worth remembering that when I begin to admire the ingenuity of humans. It’s because we’re made in God’s image.