Sandra Myers

On April 8th, North America experienced a solar eclipse. Starting in Mexico, the shadow of the sun made its way across Texas through to Maine ending in the southeastern portion of Canada. For the part that experienced the total blocking of the sun, this is one of the longest total eclipses due to the nearness of the moon to earth.

    Many people traveled from around the world to be under the path of totality for up to 4 1/2 minutes. I admit I was caught up a bit with the eclipse, but not for the reasons some might assume. The event made me deeply reflect on the magnitude and grandeur of God’s design and power, especially as compared to man’s god-like, self-indulgent, grandiose plans. I really cannot find enough words to express my awe in God’s power and design. But first, let’s look at man’s designs.

Man’s Machinations—Attempting to Be As God

Have the scientists now exceeded their wisdom and are unwittingly working toward a Frankensteinian world? Too often, what starts out as meant for good is corrupted and commandeered to expand man’s own glory, riches, power and control. Here are a few examples:

Geo-engineering: Manipulating our Earth’s natural elements such as the seas, skies, and atmosphere to counteract against perceived climate threats. Two examples include stimulating phytoplankton blooms in the ocean by seeding iron to absorb excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, to spraying aerosols in the skies to give clouds the maximum reflectivity and brighten them.

Space control: Plans are underway to create a space “umbrella” to 1) protect earth from the sun’s heat (https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160425-how-a-giant-space-umbrella-could-stop-global-warming); 2) protect against solar storm aka coronal mass ejections, research the Carrington Event (https://www.afcea.org/signal-media/guarding-power-grid-against-natural-enemy); or 3) to divert a potential asteroid heading to earth by shooting a bomb at it (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/dart).

Biotechnology of humans, animals and plants: Clones, hybridization of plants, animals and man. Nanorobots injected into human beings; feeding livestock hormones, antibiotics and vaccines without regard to pass-through to consumers. Fetal (baby) tissue research. Manipulations of human-beings by various means such as chip implantation; transplanting animal organs into humans, gender reassignment.

Artificial Intelligence: We are inventing machines to purposely outthink us. What could possibly go wrong?

Greedy Gods: Those that manipulate the political and economic balance to exalt themselves above all mankind. Wars and rumors of wars and other strife are perpetrated to steal land or resources, from you and me and from entire, less-powerful countries.

Wrap Your Head Around This:

With all of man’s grandiose plans and schemes, his self-perceived intelligence is still infinitesimally small compared to God’s. Take a moment and think about the smallest, even invisible, details of our lives. God orchestrated it all... from the beginning:

The Great Creator: Scientists mapped human DNA? Pfft. That’s nothing. God created man from mere dust and breathed life into him. (Let’s see the scientists do that.) God knew you before you were born. Within our tiny cells and DNA are instructions for making eyes, fingers, lungs, heart, etc. Even the simple concept of sleep is amazing: in trust, we close our eyes and in about 8 hours, zing, we are ready to start a new day. All devised from the foundation of the world.

The Great Mathematician: This is how the eclipse excited me: Like the inner workings of an exquisite watch multiplied to infinity, imagine God’s boundless plan: He designed our galaxy, keeping our earth, the planets and the sun in place with magnetic fields, gravity, gases and other forces that are too lofty for me to comprehend. There are comets, meteors, and asteroids that come around in varied cycles. Haley’s comet comes around every 75-79 years, the Pons-Brooks comet about every 70 years, the Perseid and Lyrid meteor shower occurs every year. God literally hung the sun and the moon. Like that precision watch, He put every part in place and in motion. Our creator knows every planet and star and calls them by their name (Psalm 147:4). I love how David marvels and glories about God’s magnificence in Psalms 8.

    However, man, in his lofty aspiration is setting about controlling and manipulating space. They are concerned about a possible asteroid collision with earth to the extent that, as an experiment, they launched a rocket (DART) to try divert a moonlet (Dimorphos) from its orbit around an asteroid (Didymos). With their precise mathematical calculations they hit the moonlet. However, the explosion created a bunch of space debris (boulders). Oops. Now it looks like some of the boulders could hit Mars. I bet Elon Musk didn’t see that coming for his planned colony on Mars. As smart as these people believe they are, it seems they didn’t consider the full ramifications of their experiment. What if changing the shape and trajectory of the moonlet, as well as the debris flying through space causes a dangerous event that they didn’t bargain for? Will God laugh at their calamity?

    Apart from space, I haven’t even touched on the God’s math and His numbers that prevail in our natural world here on earth. Due to space constraints, we’ll have to leave that for another time, but it is truly awe-inspiring to consider.

    For all the things that the learned men and scientists think they know, God truly knows all things that man has yet to discover. That’s why science often contradicts or corrects itself. His thoughts are truly higher than ours.