Before...

Friday I mowed the grass, what’s left of it after drought and chinch bugs.

The UPS man delivered two sample copies of my Christmas book and I gloated over it for a while; it looks good.

Ginny’s boss evaluated her work as exemplary — that’s next to the highest rating on the scale.

My doctor called saying he wants me to see a specialist because my lab work came back with a high PSA reading. I get to have a more thorough prostate exam. O Goody, goody! Just what I always wanted!

Those are the things happening in my material world. Fortunately in my thought world, things prove a bit more interesting as I continue to kick around the concept of proof. For instance, I have a problem with teleology, i.e. the argument of design in nature as a proof of God’s existence. I wonder if some defenders of this concept don’t stretch the point a bit too far.

Every week or so someone sends me an e-mail photo of a cloud formation which supposedly shows giant hands in the clouds blessing America.

I’m skeptical about such things.

Those clouds, from another angle, could just as well look like bunnies. But I always suspect that the photos have been doctored, enhanced, faked by some overzealous fan of God’s.

Aren’t there real wonders enough in creation?

One of the deepest experiences of worship I ever had came while dissecting a cat in a biology class. Seeing how the cat was put together inspired in me a pure wonder at God’s design. He’s really pretty smart, you know.

Joy wells up with in me on seeing the intricacies of a spider web in my garden or the flight patterns of birds in my backyard or the color spectrum in a dew drop or the power of an ant — tiny nudges to worship all.

Yes, a design calls for a Designer.

A plan reveals a Planner.

Love originates with a Lover.

Good comes from God.

I grasp these ideas.

It’s just that I think they don’t go far enough. Creation reveals a much bigger thing, a wonder beyond my imagination.

I picture the universe as a giant airplane flying to a lavish vacation resort. The arch terrorist used his box-cutter tongue to slash Eve, the first stewardess; he seized the controls, and crashed the whole thing into the ground.

In spite of his villainy, stunned survivors stagger around the crash site.

And you and I blunder around the wreckage as the children of those earlier survivors.

We descendents of the original survivors have never actually flown in the plane but we try to make sense of the debris around us, and we use what we can as we survive from day to day. This has been going on for years now.

Tangles of wire and cable litter the area. Scraps of aluminum cut our bare feet.

We find what is obviously a seat. We can tell what that is. We use it.

We find a shoe, but there’s a foot still in it. We discard it.

We find a fold-down tray; we can make use of that.

We find a black box; no telling what that thing is for…

But every once in a while, we spot a piece of the wing.

And we realize that we were made to fly…

That we were headed Home …

Before the crash.