Common Wonders

When I was a kid, I heard that God gave us rainbows as reminders of His promise never to destroy the earth by flood again.  Being the nerdy kid I was, I wondered if we would expect rainbows if they weren’t given to us.  In other words, I wondered how many things that should be known aren’t because we don’t have a concept of them.

Then there was the day in 7^th grade science class when our teacher told us bumblebees shouldn’t be able to fly.  There was no understanding of aeronautics at the time that would allow for small wings to support flight of such a chubby insect.  That didn’t stop God from designing such a creature.   Apparently now they have discovered the math that allows for bumblebee flight.  Maybe God created that math when He created the bumblebee just to add to the wonder we have for our world.

Woodworking has been a hobby of mine most of my life.  As I worked around the shop over the years, I began to think of how God has set up this universe so that man could progress from fairly primitive cultures like the pre-flood guys up to today.  To build quality furniture, for instance, you need to be able find an absolutely vertical line and a line perfectly perpendicular to that vertical line and carry those lines to the work piece.  In other words, you would need to be able to construct a perfect carpenter’s square.  This is needed in building all sorts of things from pyramids to picture frames to Noah’s ark.

God has supplied the laws and conditions of this universe so even the simplest culture can arrive at a square if they think about it.  We can create a perfectly vertical line by suspending a rock from a thread.  We can create a perpendicular line to that vertical line by putting water into a beaker.  Water seeks its own level, so the surface of the water is absolutely perpendicular to the vertical line produced by gravity acting on the rock suspended on a thread.  There you have it, the basics of a carpenter’s square.

Now to check the square once you’ve built it is also provided by God.  First you need a board with a straight side.  A straight line, of course, can be created by tightly stretching a thread between two points.  Viola’, you have a perfectly straight line and can check the board to see if it’s straight.  If it is, you can lay one arm of the square you’ve built against the side of the board.  To check its perpendicular arm, draw a line along the edge of that arm then flip the square over and see if the arm aligns with the line you just drew.  If it does, you have made a perfect square.  I use this method whenever I buy a new square.  You can spot a cheap square that is perfectly aligned by using this method.

Making a circle is just as simple.  Put a peg in a whole in a board, tie a string to it, tie a marking device of some sort to the other end of the string, and drawing a circle using the radius.

In cabinetmaking there is something called a “story rod.”  It is a tool used to find the distance between two walls, for instance.  A story rod is actually two rods.  The end of one rod is placed against a wall, and the other rod is placed against the other wall.  The two rods are held together in a straight line and level.  Where the two rods overlap, the installer can put a pencil mark and take that measurement back to the shop.  It is a precise method for measuring the new cabinet in order to fit the space perfectly.  The reason it is called a “story rod” is because in ancient times, illiterate cultures like the early Israelites would keep their family history on a rod like similar to Aaron’s rod.  Each generation’s patriarch would carve something on a rod like Aaron’s so they would be remembered by future generations.  Patriarchs would sit with their children in the evening and recite the family story as they were reminded by the chronological carvings on the rod.  When someone like Aaron wanted to measure a space, he could take his story rod along with a plain rod and overlap then pushing the ends to touch each end of the space.  Where the rods overlapped, say at Uncle Benjamin’s carved spot, they knew how large the space was.  They used the stories represented by carvings on the rod to remember a dimension.  No inches or fractions needed.  God gave us a way to measure something long before the tape measure came about.  By the way, the story rod is still used today by some cabinetmakers because it’s easier and more accurate than a tape measure.

Now with vertical lines, level gauges, circles, measuring devices, and squares we can build most of the important structures up until just a few centuries ago from chairs to houses.

Then there’s the light we see.  You know the color we “see” doesn’t really exist.  The green leaves of a tree aren’t really green but reflect a specific frequency of sunlight and absorb all other frequencies.  That specific frequency of light strikes the cones of our eyes which convert the frequency to an electrical impulse. The impulse then travels up our optic nerve.  It is our minds which interpret that electrical impulse as the color we think we see.  In this way, God has provided a much more interesting universe filled with colors of every shade and intensity.  It is also an added way for us to distinguish various items from one another.

Then there’s water. There are very few substances on earth that expand when frozen (only 3 last I heard). Water is one of them. That’s why ice floats. Since ice floats, ponds and lakes freeze on top insulating the rest of the water from the freezing temps. If Ice didn’t float, it would sink to the bottom freezing the lake from the bottom up. Eventually the lake would freeze solid killing all the fish. So, God designed water to expand when frozen in order to maintain fresh water fish on earth. Pretty neat.

I’m sure there are lots of other things we’re not aware of that God has created just as they are just for us, but these are just a few as examples of His ultimate wisdom and preparation of the world for our use and enjoyment.  What a wonderful and creative God we serve!

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