Art & Soul post #14 by Elana Brownfield-
I love the way God reveals Himself through His creation. A beautiful sunset, delicate flowers, breathtaking scenery, and peaceful bodies of water all display His presence. One of the aspects of His creation that I find truly stunning is the cosmos. Psalms 19:1-2 (NLT) say, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known.” If one just looks up into the sky, the full measure of His handiwork cannot be seen. To begin to understand the craftsmanship behind the creation of the universe, we can look to recent scientific discoveries.
Take the massive scale and structure of the universe for instance. Did you know that the observable universe is 93 billion light-years in diameter? A single light-year is a unit equal to about 6 trillion miles. Truly mind-boggling! Within this vast universe lies one tiny spec called planet Earth. But just because Earth is so small in relation to the entire universe, don’t think for one minute that it is not special. In fact, planet earth is so unique that the fine-tuning and divine order involved to enable life here leaves me speechless.
There are many ways that planet Earth is specifically fine-tuned for life. Let’s look at Earth’s relationship to the sun. Earth orbits the sun at a precise distance. If it were any further or closer, a stable water cycle wouldn’t be possible because the water would either freeze or evaporate. The brightness of the sun also impacts the balancing of greenhouse gas levels which keeps the temperature of the planet at a livable level. The orbital tilt of our planet is fine-tuned as well, for even minor changes in the tilt of the Earth’s axis would result in an uninhabitable climate. The speed of Earth’s rotation is important too. If the rotation was slower, our days would get too hot and our nights too cold to support life. If the rotation were faster, a whole host of things would happen such as loss of gravity, stronger hurricanes, more earthquakes, and flooding of water around the equator. There are many more examples of precise tuning like these that support the existence of an intelligent designer. Those who claim that these observations are a result of chance fail to consider the massive amount of overwhelming evidence that points to the existence of our Creator, God.
After reading the book The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel, which cites these and many other examples of scientific evidence that support the existence of God and His masterful design in the creation of the universe, I was inspired to create this piece of digital artwork. For the first time I realized that Earth was extraordinarily special, unlike any other planet ever discovered. Additionally, the odds of life on Earth originating by chance is comparable to taking all the separate parts of a car and throwing them up in the air and expecting them to fall down into the exact place needed to create a functioning vehicle! It actually takes more faith to believe that everything came to be by luck than by the guiding hand of an intelligent designer. The hands holding the Earth in my artwork represent these guiding hands of God and the text reads:
Earth
Filled with beauty
Precisely tuned
Purposefully ordered
Positively unique
Amazing craftsmanship
Incredibly complex
Intelligently designed
Undeniable evidence
Created by God
Earth
One of my favorite speakers on the topic of the awesomeness of God’s created universe and planet Earth is Louie Giglio. If you have never heard him speak on this topic, I highly recommend it for you will have a new appreciation for our amazing God. One of my favorite Louie Giglio videos is Our God is Indescribable. The main thing that Louie has helped me come to understand is that, even though God is an unbelievable Creator who spoke into existence a massive, unfathomable, and beautiful universe (Psalm 33:9), He still intimately knows and loves each and every one of us. In fact, He ordered each one of our days (Psalm 139:16), knows the number of hairs on our heads (Luke 12:7), and He formed and knew us before we were even born (Jeremiah 12:7). His greatest desire is to have a personal relationship with us. That’s the awe-inspiring Creator of the universe and the God I know.
“God is always seeking you. Every sunset. Every clear blue sky. Each ocean wave. The starry hosts of night. He blankets each new day with the invitation, ‘I am here.’ ” -Louie Giglio
In His Love,
Elana
Elana Brownfield
Digital artist and founder of Redeemer's Heart