Never forget that the world is not on auto-pilot; the water cycle does not happen on auto-pilot; air is not replenished on auto-pilot; babies are not conceived and born on auto-pilot; seeds do not fall and plants and trees born on auto-pilot; the sun does not rise on auto-pilot*; the systems we think are dependable and inevitable are really neither; we must never forget this. We must also be careful.
There is one God, and many gods. God created all things. He did not then remove Himself from all things. He is not the clockmaker that wound up the world and let her go; and this makes all the difference.
The fact is He holds all things together; He sends the water from the land to the sky, the sky to the ocean, the ocean to the land, and back again; He covers the atmosphere with enough oxygen to keep almost 7 billion people breathing; He takes the sperm and plants it into fertile egg, develops the child, and commands the developed lungs to respond upon birth; He carries the seeds from their source to the appropriate soil, draws their roots into the earth, and cultivates new plants and trees; He keeps our planet in orbit and rotation, to show us the sun each day; this is not ordinary, this is supernatural.
When remembering such power, we must be careful. We may be quick to tremble, wondering if He might, at any moment, relinquish His power and thereby destroy all “systems”. But this fear is not of God. He does not lord His power over His creation in hopes of cornering us into begrudging submission. He does not do this, because He loves us. We must be careful because we must remember this. And when we don’t, we submit to ungodly fear.
God is just, meaning He is true and more honest than we can yet fathom. He has used his power to destroy the earth and will do it again; He will be just in both. We must respect this power but we must not be afraid for He is not a bully; He does not corner us. What we must remember is that He is just and merciful; He wants our devotion and will use just and merciful means to woo us to Him, but He will not scare us into devotion.
He is holding all things together not because He can but because He is mercifully giving us new opportunity to draw close to Him. This perspective is what reminds us that the ordinary is not so ordinary, and that His great mercy sustains us. May we not forget this; may we be ever thankful; may we draw near to Him.
*Great Chesterton quote:
"A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough... It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again," to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again," to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. "
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