Last night as we sang around the campfire, our daughter Abigail suggested this song –

“I sing the mighty pow’r of God, that made the mountains rise,
That spread the flowing seas abroad, and built the lofty skies.
I sing the wisdom that ordained the sun to rule the day;
The moon shines full at His command, and all the stars obey.”

Isaac Watts wrote this triumphant hymn of praise to Creator God in 1715. It expresses so powerfully the fact that our universe is one of order, sustained by the mighty power of God.

We are in the middle of the excitement over the eclipse and our community will experience totality around 12:34 today. We have family and friends staying with us and anticipate a once -in-a-lifetime experience.

I recalled reading the book Miracles by Eric Metaxes. In the chapter, The Miracle of the Universe, Metaxes cites scientific evidence that demonstrates the wonder of our existence on planet Earth. The following is one piece of that evidence –

” For life to be possible anywhere in our universe, there needed to be vast amounts of carbon. In 1953, Sir Fred Hoyle – the Cambridge astronomer who coined the term “Big Bang”  – discovered that nuclear ground-state energy levels of helium, carbon, oxygen, and beryllium had to be extraordinarily fine-tuned for enough carbon to be created. If any of the ground levels were just 1 percent different, there would not have been enough carbon in the universe to allow for the possibility of life. To Hoyle, an atheist, the notion that this fine-tuning had “just happened” was statistically quite impossible.” p. 51

As we view the eclipse together with friends and family, let’s make a conscientious decision to give glory to the One responsible – our Heavenly Father.

Isaiah 40: 26

Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
    Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
    and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
    not one of them is missing.

Eric Metaxes says this –

“The slimness of our being here is so slim that it’s enough to leave us goggle-eyed with terror – until in the next moment we realize we are indeed here and explode with gratitude for our very existence. This really can be the only proper and logical response to it all, to marvel and rejoice and rest in the genuinely unfathomable miracle of our being.” p. 54

As we watch this amazing display of God’s sustaining power at work in our universe, let us praise the mighty power of God.

 

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