Sunday Spice #16: Thinking God’s Thoughts After Him

In a recent devotional from Our Daily Bread Ministries, Kirsten Holmberg pointed to the work and the quote from scientist Johannes Kepler. He said of his discoveries that he was “merely thinking God’s thoughts after him.” As I am often inclined to do, I am taking time in this episode of Sunday Spice to talk about one of my very favorite topics … creation and its Creator!

So, like Johannes Kepler, we too can notice and identify attributes about this created world and receive insights that help us think God’s thoughts after Him. But Johannes Kepler is not the only one, as we shall soon discover ….

For a scientist born in 1571 to claim to think God’s thoughts after Him, Johannes Kepler had many firsts that gave strong evidence of such a claim.

• He was the first to correctly explain planetary motion.
• He was the first to investigate the formation of pictures with a pinhole camera.
• He was the first to explain the process of vision by refraction within the eye.
• He was the first to formulate eyeglasses designing for nearsightedness and farsightedness.
• He was the first to explain the use of both eyes for depth perception.
• He was the first to explain the principles of how a telescope works.
• He was the first to explain that the tides are caused by the Moon (Galileo, of all people, reproved him for this).
• He tried to use stellar parallax caused by the Earth’s orbit to measure the distance to the stars; the same principle as depth perception. Today this branch of research is called astrometry.
• He was the first to suggest that the Sun rotates about its axis.
• He was the first to derive the birth year of Christ, that is now universally accepted.
• He coined the word “satellite”.

Consider author and evangelist Ray Comfort who points to where the Bible serves as the original document that announces that the earth is round. He quotes Isaiah 40:22, “It is He who sits above the circle of the earth.”

Comfort wrote the book, Scientific Facts in the Bible: 100 Reasons to Believe the Bible is Supernatural in Origin. Comfort mentions that the sacred writings of Mormons, Buddhists, and Muslims are not only void of proven prophecies (unlike the Christian Bible) but that all books in any of the world religions are woefully empty of scientific truth. “In fact,” he says, “they contain statements that are clearly unscientific.”

Let me take you back to school for a moment. If you remember any botany lessons as early as the late elementary school years all the way into high school and college you know that plants drink in water and process it in such a way as to make that water useful toward its own growth. Mix in things like sunshine, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and chlorophyll and then take notice of the various parts of the plant and how they function, you might then remember scientific terms like transpiration and photosynthesis. This transpiration process, which is the evaporation of water through plants, is described succinctly in one single verse in the Bible and it was penned long before the invention of the microscope, which has helped us understand how plants function better. The plant does indeed drink water in but it also returns the water to the sky from where it originated.  It’s Isaiah 55:10, which says, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater.”

Then there is Matthew Maury who by 1842 had discovered both ocean and air currents. He had read Psalm 8:5-8 “Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. ⁶ You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, ⁷ all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, ⁸ the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas.”

Maury proclaimed, “If God says there are paths in the sea, I am going to find them!” And he did. By finding and mapping the sea currents sailors could create strategies for crossing the oceans in less time and with greater efficiency. This revolutionized naval travel and commercial shipping.

Another verse arrested Maury’s attention from Ecclesiastes 1:6 “The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north; around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.” From this Biblical starting point, Maury discovered what is now called the jet stream.

All of this is why Maury owns the historic titles of “The Father of Oceanography,” “The Pathfinder of the Seas,” and “The Father of Naval Meteorology.”

You have surely heard of George Washington Carver. He said, “Reading about nature is fine, but if a person walks in the woods and listens carefully, he can learn more than what is in books, for they speak with the voice of God.” Carver championed the peanut during a time when the South needed to replace the cotton crop that had been attacked by infestation and which had also depleted the soil. He found over 300 uses for the peanut and also made over 100 products from sweet potatoes.

And another … Reverend George Malkmus had just buried his mother, the victim of colon cancer, and then he learned he had a life-threatening baseball-sized tumor under his ribs. A preacher encouraged him to drink carrot juice. This grew into him drinking one to two quarts of fresh vegetable juices daily and from that launch pad he discovered the original Biblical diet. Malkmus recommends followers consume fruit, vegetables and whole grains consisting of 85% raw and 15% cooked plant-based foods. What is his premise? Genesis 1:29 “And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.’”

Maybe you have heard about his diet … He calls it the Hallelujah Diet and has helped many others since he started in 1976. He is now 88 years old.  I have gotten to visit Hallelujah Acres in North Carolina, where his offices and many other attractions are located.

The Apostle Paul reprimanded people who “suppress the truth” and refuse to accept God as the Creator and among other things said in that first chapter of Romans “For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” The very creation, and the Bible which announces that creation, are both witnesses that God is alive and well and if we read that Bible diligently enough and take notice of the very witness of nature we can find practical advice and wisdom for daily living and we too can know the joy of thinking God’s thoughts after Him.  I suggest you spend a little time each week in God’s creation and see what He has to say!!!

I’m Tammy Reneé, and this is Sunday Spice. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed are the people who take refuge in Him!