Self-Made Man?

Know that the Lord, He is God;

It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.

We are His sheep and the people of His pasture.

Psalm 100:3, NKJV

People never cease to amaze me.

Take them to the most beautiful spots on earth, point out the grandeur of God's vast creation, look into the majestic and endless heavens, consider the complexities of the human body, not to mention the human heart. And invariably, some rocket scientist will say, "What an accident!" Challenge that rocket scientist--with his enormous library, impressive degrees, and small, closed mind--and he'll get on his high horse and in your face, ridicule anyone who believes in God, and continue to claim, without one shred of proof, that billions and billions of years ago, something unknowable imploded in on itself, flung its debris outward, and from that the universe managed to assemble itself.

That same man will insist that in a backwater part of this little galaxy of ours, a planet formed that was exactly the right distance from the sun, with the exactly the right combination of elemental compounds in its terrestrial sphere and atmosphere, to support the intricate system of life found on our Earth. In a noxious primordial soup, the right two proteins happened to run into each other, linking themselves to become the first amino acid and the building blocks upon which all life would stand. Single celled organisms begin to form, collecting together in clusters and putting their little nucleic centers to work making something of themselves. Skip forward an eon or two, and those cell clusters have mutated into amphibious form, a fishy creature with fins like feet that flops out of the soup onto the shores of some forgotten sea and suddenly finds itself able to breathe in oxygen through the pinholes in its face. Skip forward another eon or three, and our little industrious amphibian has lost his fins, grown a tail and opposable thumbs, and is swinging from the family tree looking for two rocks to bang together. He spots a shemonkey without a tail and walking upright, knocks her in the head with one of his rocks, and their children become the far distant ancestors of the magnificent specimen of humankind that the rocket scientist looks at in the mirror everyday.

Or so he'd like to think.

And then he looks at his life, his education, his career, his accomplishments, and all of the dreams yet before him. And because he is a handsome and smart and well-balanced individual, he determines that he is the way he is because of his own abilities. He is the supreme accident that just happened into this world.

The thing about accidents is...I've never seen a pretty one. They are all ugly messes. Accidents break things, they don't build things. Blow up the baking aisle at Kroger; you don't get perfectly assembled cookies, you get chaos. Blow up a printing press; you don't get a dictionary, you get devastation. Blow up a scrap metal yard; you don't get a new car, you get shrapnel.

It has been my observation that the things I contribute on my own to my life usually make the biggest messes. And thus I see a self-made man. But when I look at what an infinite and awesome God does, I never cease to be amazed at the wonder of His work in my life, and in my world. The Psalmist recognized the the handiwork of God when he said:

Make a joyful shout to the Lord!

Serve the Lord with gladness!

Come before His presence with singing!

Enter His gates with thanksgiving!

Come into His courts with praise!

Be thankful to Him!

Bless His name!

He is God. He has made us. And He is good!