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Topic: Design (01/19/04)
TITLE: Designed to Fail? By Kathy Pollock 01/25/04 |
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Despite those failures, man is capable of some awesome things. I only understand computers from a standpoint of which buttons to push, still don’t quite comprehend how cell phones work, and am completely baffled by laser surgery. Although I have no comprehension of how these things actually function, I can’t deny that they work, and that a mind vastly superior, or at least different, from mine invented them. How do we get those satellite images anyway? And does anyone really know how they get the oil and vinegar to stay together in the Kraft dressing? Obviously, not me.
As I get older, technology leaves me further behind. I can’t seem to keep up with the latest designs in things. My cell-phone is equipped for text messaging and some type of photo images, but I am quite pleased that I finally found out how to turn the ringer up and down, and how to make the type bigger. I am amazed that I can take pictures without film and develop them myself. I am frustrated that you need a new computer every two years because science changes faster than my old model can keep up with. Film images from Mars are fascinating, although my grandpa would have said they were actually out in the Chihuahan desert somewhere. He never did believe we went to the moon. I guess my inabilities are genetic.
No matter how far advanced man thinks himself to be, his efforts are humorous compared to those of God. As a homeschooling mother of a bunch of children, I’ve nearly worn out my collection of A Beka Biology books. When the children marvel at how man has figured out things on a cellular level, I am in awe of the maker of the cells. All our inventions, no matter how significant we think they are, or how helpful to mankind or how destructive, are all just explorations of what He already knows. Man thinks himself vastly intelligent because he is able to explain these things. God must get a smile at how long it’s taken to figure some of them out. You can explain photosynthesis, but you can’t create it. You can explore the stars, but He named them all. You can categorize, classify, dissect, photograph and analyze His creation, but you can’t duplicate it. Even cloning doesn’t really make an identical replica.
We can put our trust in the things of man, but it will be a temporary trust. We will leave behind landfills overrun with over-the-hill equipment, worn-out machines, used-up tools. We’ll never coat a million blades of grass with ice, never be the ones who tell the sea where to stop, never create a hurricane. We may equip ourselves to handle a blizzard, but as Job asked, “Who has entered the treasures of the snow?”
So I don’t worry too much about what man’s creating, even if his inventions are the latest and greatest. I’ll see my Designer in a leaf, in the irreproducible tints of a sunset, the innocent blueness of a baby’s eyes, and the first green of spring. His designs are perfect and they reveal His nature: the fury of a typhoon, the velvet of a daylily, the symmetry of a leaf, the whimsy of a hummingbird, and the chuckle He gave at the first giraffe. And I am absolutely certain that He never would have expected us to set the clock on a VCR—perhaps that’s why they too are obsolete—or try to preserve anything in plastic wrap. He’s too good at what He does.