When God

"Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Tell Me, if you have understanding.

Who determined the measurements?  Surely you know!

Or who stretched the line upon it?

To what were its foundations fastened?  Or who laid its cornerstone,

when all the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Or who shut in the sea with doors, when it burst forth and issued from the womb;

When I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band;

When I fixed My limit for it, and set bars and doors;

When I said, 'This far you may come, but no farther,

and here your proud waves must stop!'"

God to Job, Job 38:4-11, NKJV

 

 

Have a cookie, I might say if you ever came to my house for a visit.  And as you taste the most wonderful chocolate chip cookies in the world, you mumble around a mouthful, "These are the best cookies I've ever had!  Did you make these?"

 

No, I say.  A bomb went off in my kitchen the other day, bursting bags of flour and sugar, both white and brown.  It exploded a carton of eggs, broke a bottle of vanilla, laid down a layer of lard, scattered the salt and baking soda, blew a bag of pecans out of their shells, and tossed chocolate chips everywhere.  Two eggs, half a cup of Crisco, two-thirds of a cup of white sugar, two-thirds of a cup of brown, one teaspoon of vanilla, a teaspoon each of baking soda and salt, a handful of chopped pecans, and half a bag of chocolate morsels landed in a mixing bowl.  In the chaos, all of it was stirred up and spooned out in just the right portions on a cookie sheet that got hit with a splash of non-stick cooking spray.  The force of the blast threw open the oven, tossed the cookie sheet in, and a piece of debris initiated the baking sequence in the oven.  And as everything else settled neatly back into place in my kitchen, a batch of cookies was expelled from the oven after fifteen minutes at 340 degrees, thrown onto a baking rack, and left for us to find when we arrived home, cooled and ready to eat, a cold mug of milk that had poured itself sitting right beside them.

 

Really?! you might exclaim, awed but accepting, because it makes absolutely perfect sense that a cataclysmic explosion in my kitchen would result in the best batch of cookies ever.  And did I mention that I had none of those things in my kitchen to begin with.  In fact, I didn't even have a kitchen.  This house wasn't even here when the bomb went off.  This was all just a grove of trees...

 

Nope, I would reply.  Here's your sign.

 

When there was nothing, nothing at all, nothing except God, eternally existent as FatherSonSpirit, God decided to make everything.  When One is all powerful, all knowing, and everywhere present all the time, One can do pretty much anything One wants, and He wanted to do this.  Way, way back there in the very beginning, when God started start, He intentionally brought into being all things that are now, have ever been, and ever will be, placing them perfectly within the time and space of Himself.  He didn't just fling stuff out there and hope it turned out okay.  Like an artist or an engineer or a pastry chef making cookies, He made it all, just so.

 

Imagine for a moment that you could witness the miracle of creation...

 

When God thought up then founded the universe.

 

When God determined its measurements and established its boundaries.

 

When God fixed every galaxy, every star, every planet, moon, asteroid, comet and speck of cosmic dust in place.

 

When God filled the empty seas with water and told the tide how far to wash up on the shore.

 

When God swaddled the earth in an atmospheric garment.

 

I wasn't there to see it myself, but just reading about it makes me want to rejoice over the great goodness of our Creator.  What a Mighty God we serve!