I Didn't Run Into House

Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.  -- Deuteronomy 10:14

This is just a brief summary of all that I have learned from our recent trials:  We know less than we think.  I mean, we live in the country and everything, but all these doctors graduated from accredited medical programs, and some of them are pretty smart.  I didn’t run into House because he doesn’t exist -- neither do the eccentric geniuses in CSI or Sherlock Holmes or Captain America or happy, cute, funny gay couples or Magic Negroes or 98-pound women who can kick my rapidly aging butt in a fist fight without messing up their make-up. 

We laugh about “first-world problems”, but we do live in a first-world fantasy.  Perhaps even the concept of first-world versus developing nations versus third-world nations is mostly illusion – a bubble that is about to burst, a fluffy castle in the air that is really a glowering thunderhead.

We must know a lot because we have these amazing devices like smart phones and the internet and lasers, and we have mapped the human genome.  No doubt we are a clever species.  We are where we are because some of our ancient ancestors figured out that fire was a good thing, and they figured out how to create it.   

Try to imagine the leap that some humanoid, running from a grass fire on the savannah, made when he or she decided that it was possible to intentionally ignite and control this deadly and terrifying phenomenon.  I have a book on the shelf called Caveman Chemistry, but where did those first fire-makers get their PhDs in chemistry?  The point is that being able to create a new technology or device doesn’t mean we have a grasp of all the things that go into it.   

One of these days we might figure out why and how gravity acts the way it does and create anti-gravity, but our knowledge about how it works has taken us to the moon and sent our probes out beyond the solar system.

Ultimately, as Moses said, all of it belongs to God.  He alone knows not only how it works but why it works this way.  He knows, most importantly, the purpose for all of it.  That purpose is in Him, as both origination and destination – Alpha and Omega.  The universe may have been necessary to bring us about, and, in that sense, we could say that the world revolves around us, but we live to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.  Find God and you will find the center of the cosmos. 

The truth and reality are much more powerful and elegant and beautiful than our myths, our maps and our theories, as insightful, pragmatic and useful as those may be.  We don’t have to throw away the map to enjoy the scenery.  We just have to know when to look up.