Wyatt’s World

Miracles are all around us all the time

My Sunday School class discussed last week why miracles are not as prevalent today as they were in the time of Jesus.

I beg to differ. Miracles are all around us all the time. The problem is we don’t see them. Our eyes are closed.

When you are surrounded by miracles every second of your life, it hard to see the forest for the trees.

Many Americans who consider themselves educated and sophisticated find the notion of the immaculate conception hard to swallow. They may appreciate the noble principles of Christianity, but they can’t accept beliefs that defy the laws of science.

In our increasingly humanistic secular society, science is replacing God. You see this in the global warming debate, in which secular humanists look to science, not God, to save our planet.

After all, Adam ate the apple because he and Eve wanted to know what God knows. We still do. We never stop trying. It’s not enough to accept that God is in control. We want to be in control. We want the power and the glory and the knowledge.

I have been reading a book called “A Brief History of Time” written by Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest theoretical physicists of our era. He is an atheist.

As I read this book, I found it very strange that an avowed atheist never stops writing about God. Again and again, page after page, Hawking de­scribes the miraculous improbability of creation and wrestles with how it could happen without a creator, without God.

The problem for Hawking is that as science unfolds the layers of the universe, God becomes more, not less, apparent. That’s tough for an atheist physicist to explain.

There are four main material forces in the universe: electromagnetism, which is what powers your lights; the strong force, which holds protons and neutrons together in the nucleus of atoms; the weak force, the radioactivity that powers Grand Gulf; and gravity, which keeps our feet on the ground.

As it turns out, if any one of these four forces was altered by the tiniest amount, the universe could not exist. How tiny an amount? That would be the number 10 followed by 27,000 zeros. We don’t have a word for that number.

So how could this be? Hawking keeps asking this question again and again in his book. The best answer he comes up with is the anthropic principle, which goes something like this: “No matter how improbable the universe is, we wouldn’t be here to ask the question if it didn’t happen.”

That’s it. That’s the best answer the greatest theoretical physicist in the world can come up with to explain how our world exists without God. Excuse me, Dr. Hawking, while I go read the Bible.

It is one thing to deny miracles when all of science tells you they can’t be true. It is another thing to deny miracles when all of science points a huge neon flashing sign to God’s miracle of creation.

If God can create the universe from nothingness, I don’t have the least bit of problem with immaculate conception in a human body. Or we could open our eyes and see how every single human birth is a miracle of unimaginable proportions.

Hawking writes a lot about the space-time continuum, which we now know exists. As it turns out time and space are the same thing. Humans can travel through space but we can’t seem to travel through time. We aren’t built for it.

The creator of the universe would have no such limitation. This gives God powers that time-limited humans can’t possibly understand – even smart folks like Hawking. Don’t try to figure it out, just believe as Thomas finally did when he placed his hand in Jesus’ wound.

It’s not just the universe that is so miraculous. Earth is just as miraculous. If you factor in all the things that had to happen for human life to exist on Earth it comes to a number that exceeds the stars in the universe. Star Wars got it wrong. We are alone in the universe. The science proves it.

Most stars are in globular clusters that are constantly getting zapped by gamma rays from supernova explosions. Most planets are too close or too far from their star. Without our huge moon, Earth would have only a dark side and a cold side. Without Jupiter, Earth would get pummeled by asteroids. And so on for 100 more variables.

So when you ponder on the miracle of Christ’s birth, don’t hesitate to believe with all your heart and soul. The promise is real, far more real than human understanding.

Holly Springs South Reporter

P.O. Box 278
Holly Springs, MS 38635
PH: (662) 252-4261
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