Back to God's Word

My education has consisted of being taught God’s Word, then untaught it in school, then re-taught it as a Christian. In my early years they told me God created the world from nothing and man from dust. Later schoolteachers told me the account in Genesis was a quaint story, but in actuality the world was created from a big bang (no one said where the materials came from for ignition) and man is the latest version of an amoeba via the apes. Later still I went back to believing God created the world from nothing and man from dust.

But not entirely. I still retained stubborn vestiges of my middle layer of education, the snarky science-only years. An example of this was my beliefs about birds.

As a child I loved the chirping of birds, and I believed they were singing. Imagine my dejection in school when I was told what I had misconstrued as joy was merely jostling for territory. I walked around for decades with my head down and a low-grade depression over this. Whenever I was inclined to enjoy the chatter and trill of the celestial choir, I dutifully reminded myself that these feathered cough-ups from the primordial soup were not happy at all, but miserable and contentious.

Psalm 104 is as beautiful a paean to God the Creator and Sustainer as you will find in all of literature. It says:

“You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills; they give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them the birds of the heaven dwell; they sing among the branches.”

Are animals all business all the time, or do they sometimes play? The Word says:

“Here is the sea, great and wide, which teems with creatures innumerable, living things both small and great … which you formed to play in it.”

All these have relationship with God that you and I are not even in on, for the Word says:

“These all look to you to give them their food in due season.”

That lion cub yelping you thought was dumb and random? The Word says:

“The young lions roar for their prey, seeking their food from God.”

Whether animal sound interpretation, or human psychology, or what is a smart and profitable way to live, two choices open up before us every day: Is it what man says or what the Word says?