Life Is Beautiful

     In our modern culture we too often are too busy to step back and appreciate the beauty of life.  Have you ever just stopped and looked at the trees, flowers, animals, or even the ocean and just thought about how perfect all of those things are?  Have you ever thought about everything it takes for something to live and how beautifully perfect it is?  Look at the stars and take in the amazing sight that they are for they are the light in the darkness!  Look at the plants that live and grow into such beautiful things that give life to everything around them!  Look at the animals who live and do only what is necessary for survival!  There is such an awe striking quality in the complex simplicity of life!  Life gives life so that it can continue to live and grow!  Life never stops, it just moves on from one being to the next!  When one thing dies it provides life for the next, so is it truly dying?  When a living thing dies it can either decompose into the ground and become fertilizer for plants, or it can be eaten by animals and give them energy; both of these things are used to keep living things alive.  Life is the most complexly simple beauty that we have available to us!

 "Nothing.  Nothing cannot exist, because it is the opposite of existing.  To believe in nothingness is just that nothing.  Like death, death is not a state, its the absence of state.  Death to me is very unreal.  All I see is life.  In a dead body, I see simply life, the bacteria have already begun to decompose it.  Where then is death?" -- Chris Featherstone

     Biblically speaking God created all life.  Let that soak in for a moment.  God created all life!  Remember this next time you go outside soak in the life around you and recognize that God did all of it.  The next thing I want you to recognize is that God is life.  God breathed life into Adam and he became alive*.  Breath is commonly associated with spirit in ancient texts, therefore God gave Adam part of His spirit to bring him to life.  We all have God's spirit dwelling in us no matter who we are or what we believe!  God is in the plants and the animals.  God is life!  Therefore life cannot begin or end because God does not begin or end.  God is in all things and thus all things are Holy; this is why it is a sin to kill.  The Bible states that man is not to live by bread alone, but also by the words of God**.  God's words are what created all things and life itself, therefore we are to live by scripture and the world around us!  We are to love the world as God does because it His creation!

     *Genesis 2

     **Matthew 4:4

God in the Universe

     I have encountered many Christians who follow the Sola Scriptura idea.  This idea pretty much means that they refuse to consider any truth outside of scripture.  You will commonly hear comments like, "If it's not in the Bible, then I don't believe it!" from them.  You will also hear them say, "You can't shove God into a box." or something along those lines, yet they want to shove Him into a book?  I don't see the logic in that.  If God created the universe, then anything that is found to be true in the universe is His truth whether it is in scripture or not.  If we pursue truth, then are we not pursuing God because He created truth and Jesus said that He is truth*, therefore pursuing truth is honoring God's creation and pursuing Jesus.  Why would God give us the capacity to think, reason, and comprehend things if He did not want us to use those abilities?  I believe He gave us these abilities so that we could honor and worship Him by using them.  When we take the time to appreciate His creation and study it to better understand it we are honoring Him.  Artists of every kind want people to study and admire there work because that is why they made it, so what makes the potter any different**?

     To take this further, the Bible says that we are not to live by bread alone, but by God's words***.  If we think critically about this scripture we can make connections to other scripture.  If we are not to live by bread alone and Jesus is the bread of life<> and Jesus is the word made flesh><, then we can conclude that we are not to live by scripture alone.  You may see that as a stretch, but there is still more in this.  The scripture goes on to say that we are to live by God's words as well as bread(scripture).  In the beginning, God created the entire universe with just His words.  If God created the universe with His words, then would we not be studying His words by studying the universe?  God does not wish for us to be ignorant, otherwise He would not have created us in His own image.  To believe in Sola Scriptura is to deny all of the marvelous things that God has created.  One of the things that many people forget is that to the first Christian churches the Bible was only the Old Testament and they were living out the New Testament.  This means that the Bible can't contain all knowledge and all truth because it was still being formed while the church was already established.  All that is in the Bible is truth, but not all truth is in the Bible.  I think that it is important to remember that scripture without the church's tradition has no foundation and the church without scripture has no message.

     *John 14:6 - "Jesus told him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.  No one can come to the Father except through me."  New Living Translation

     **Romans 9:20-21 - "20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God?  Will the molded say to it's molder, 'Why have you made me like this?' 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?"  New Living Translation

     ***Matthew 4:4 - "Jesus answered, 'It is written, 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.''"  New Living Translation

     <>John 6:35 - "Jesus replied, 'I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.  Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.'"  New Living Translation

     ><John 1:14 - "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.  We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."