Awesome

A team of more than 150 scientists has mapped out how a tiny portion of a mouse’s brain tissue functions. The map showed 200,000 cells, 523 million synapses (the connections between neurons) and more than two miles of axons (the part of a neuron that passes on the electrical impulses). The vast number of interconnecting pathways that these impulses may route is mind-boggling! ‘It definitely inspires a sense of awe, just like looking at pictures of the galaxies’ said one of the project’s lead researchers.

It is natural to be in awe, but of what/whom are we in awe? Surely, the answer is our creator God rather than mere ‘chance’.

Job was an Old Testament character who needed to recognise his creator God. During a season of great suffering, quite understandably he bemoaned his lot and God’s treatment of him. Throughout his pain, perplexity, frustration and sense of injustice, he had not given up on God. Unhelped by his friends’ well-meant but empty counsel, he looked for his complaints to be answered by God.

Towards the end of his ordeal, God did answer Job but indirectly. In effect, he said to Job, ‘Instead of you questioning me, I will question you’. God got Job to look heavenwards to survey the stars and then earthwards to the animals and birds, from the greatest to the least. He had also to consider both the terrors and blessings that come from the weather. ‘Where were you Job when I set all of this up? Who was my counsellor? Can you do anything remotely like this? If not, why do you query me?’ I’m paraphrasing here. Job clasped his hand to his mouth and was silent. He was awestruck, he was humbled, seeing anew that God was God and he was not.

In the New Testament we read that creation is a self-revelation of God’s wisdom, power and glory, making our unbelief inexcusable. If this sounds unreasonable, then God has provided another way of revealing himself to us. He has taken on human form and entered into his creation as Jesus the Son of God. In him, we meet God up close and personal in a way that Job did not. In the gospel of Mark, we read of a needy man saying to Jesus, ‘Lord I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’. Amen.