Miracles and Mundanity
What do the Northern Lights, ants, and the miracle of birth have to do with one another? Today, I will endeavor to share with you a way of seeing the world that will cause you to understand the significance and connection between these three incongruent creations.
Another question, one which I ask you to take time to reflect on: When was the last time you were struck with wonder? I mean truly dumbfounded at how amazing something was. Has it been days, months, years? Can you not even remember? As children, the novelty of creation and the many characters therein would nearly take our breath away. From the first snow of the winter, to the rolly polly on the sidewalk, to the giraffe at the zoo, all of these things stopped us dead in our tracks and caused us to utter various forms of, “Wow!” For most adults, these things now cause nothing more than a quick acknowledgement of their existence. They all are just so…normal. So what happened?
Materialism
Post-Elightenment, as the Western World moved toward modernity, men began to see the world less as a land of glories and more as a sea of well-ordered atoms. Everything lost its gleam, and color faded to gray. We found ways to write off every phenomenon and remove any meaning from them. Lightning became mere static electricity. Stars became floating clouds of burning gas. Mountains became conglomerations of various metals and minerals. Fetuses became clumps of cells.
While these are all true facts to varying degrees, Digory astutely observed in The Magician’sNephew, “Grown-ups are always thinking of uninteresting explanations.” (The Magician’sNephew 10). Materialism sucked the life out of living. Not only did the secular crowd fall into the dreary grips of this world-view, but Christians, too, have unknowingly swallowed the same poison. Brian Sauve and Ben Garrett of the Haunted Cosmos podcast often remark, “The world isn’t just stuff.” I agree with this simple statement. There are many glories, dispersed and interwoven throughout creation and the fullness thereof. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Proverbs 25:2 LSB). Let us return to a few of those glories.
Illumination, Insects, and Infants
The Aurora Borealis. Photons from the nuclear reactor at the center of our solar system, which is 93 million miles away and 1.3 million times the size of Earth, interact in such a way with our atmosphere that lights shimmer down upon us like spindles which burst forth from a jewel. These lights dance to and fro, gracing the sky and reaching out to the stars above and the ground below. Their beauty causes the world to stop and demand our attention, lifting us into the heavens for a moment, carrying us into the expanse of space.
Think about the mighty ant. These small creatures are on every continent, except ironically, Antarctica. There are over 12,000 species that wage wars across the world, seeking to expand their domains and territories in a giant high-stakes game of Risk. Millions upon millions throw themselves into battle, while millions more construct colonies spanning miles. They can carry up to 50 times their own weight. If the average American male had that same strength, he could carry a small RV on his back. Think of the gift of life. How amazing is it that a woman can take two half-cells and, in 9 months, without any operator’s manuals or how-tos, create and birth an infant that will grow into a flourishing human. From just 1 cell! More amazing still is the fact that the souls that embody those infants, even from the womb, will live forever. Take that in for a moment.
The Glory Behind the Glories
What do they all have in common? They are all wondrous, glorious, praiseworthy things. Creation is glorious and jaw-droppingly amazing. I cannot help but be in wonder at how beautiful each of these things is in its own way. Yet, what is more glorious, the painting or the painter? The furniture or the craftsmen?
We should not lose sight of all the glory that the Lord has filled the heavens and the earth with. Rather, we should seek it out all the more to see all the good He has done and proclaim like Nebuchadnezzar,
For His dominion is an everlasting dominion, and His kingdom endures from generation to generation. And all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can strike against His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done? – Daniel 4:34-35
King Darius said similarly,
Then Darius the king wrote to all the peoples, nations, and men of every tongue who were inhabiting all the land: “May your peace abound! Imake a decree that in all the dominion of my kingdom, men are to fear and be in dread beforethe God of Daniel; for He is the living God and enduring forever, and His kingdom is one whichwill not be destroyed, and His dominion will be unto the end. He saves and delivers and doessigns and wonders in heaven and on earth. – Daniel 6:25-27
Living in Wonder
Life is not boring; we are boring. Great and fabulous things are everywhere. Too often do we seek to categorize and move on, neglecting to bask in the glory, however great or small, of the waving grass in the wind or the meanderings of an ox upon the plain or the raging river buffeting the banks which enclose it. Allow yourself to be amazed. Even in the simple and seemingly insignificant, there is so much to praise the Lord for.
As Chesterton put it, “There is nothing more extraordinary than an ordinary man, and an ordinary woman, and their ordinary children.” Every moment of every day is significant. The world is more than the sum of its parts. Let every day strike you with child-like wonder, for the creation is a wonder, and the Creator is the Wonder of wonders.
Bid the ordinary to be extraordinary once again.
