What A Wonderful World — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

Louis Armstrong, maybe you’re a fan of Louis Armstrong, sang many great songs. And one of them was all about living and being part of a wonderful world. And really what he was singing about is the declaration, (he was quite right) – we do live in a wonderful world. Here was the great Christian advocate, GK Chesterton, and he was once asked what he would miss most if he were an atheist.

And he replied straight away, ‘Well, if I was an atheist, I’d miss having someone to say thank you too‘. It’s true when we look at our world, we can be thankful, although I think that some people ask, where is God, when we try to make sense of life, where is He?

Appreciating our world and our lives

Well, there was a philosopher by the name of Anthony Flew, and for most of his professional life he was an atheist, and he argued very powerfully and persuasively against a belief in God. Then it was in 2004, he was an older man in his 80s, he changed his mind. He wasn’t an atheist anymore, and people asked what was it that changed the mind of Anthony Flew. It wasn’t his fear of death.

And whilst not believing in a personal God, he actually said, I believe that God is a creator. He said, I see no option in my look at the universe, the astonishing world that we live in, there has to be a Creator.

And that’s quite true, isn’t it? It’s not only a beautiful world, it’s also an incredibly, delicately balanced world. Now you think about it. There’s just a huge number of details that just got to be right so that Earth can continue, you know, the proximity of the moon and the Earth’s distance from the sun and the fact that water expands as it cools below 4 degrees, all those sorts of things. And Anthony Flew, he believed that a creative mind is far more likely the explanation than some blind chance.

And so as a Christian, I believe, and I’m sure that you would believe that God is the Creator and that God is the sustainer of our universe. And once we sort of think about that, the rest of life makes sense. In other words, we’re not here just sort of dumped here by some blind, uncaring chance. We’ve been loved – that God loves us. We have a Creator God who loves us and who has very carefully prepared this world as our home. And if you read the Bible and study the Bible, you’ll find there’s much more than that.

Whether or not you believe in God is important, but in the end it’s about trusting God in the everyday life, isn’t it?

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So you can have a conviction that you believe in God as the Creator, but it’s not the end of the story. Now this is where the hard bit comes in. Awful things happen, unpredictable things. Remember the tsunami of 2004, and there were earthquakes and hurricanes of 2005.

And some people, of course, this really does distress them, obviously, and they question whether there is really a God. But as we read the Gospels and you can read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you encounter Jesus, and He talks there about being the light of the world. And this was an encounter that not only happened then when Jesus walked this planet, walked this world, it also happens today that we can experience Jesus Christ for ourselves. I’ve talked before in the program about CS Lewis, and he said it was very difficult to make sense of Jesus other than in Christian terms. He said if the claims of the New Testament are true, if Jesus is the Son of God, and then the world was created by God, His Father and our heavenly Father.

Of course when we suffer, when bad things happen, of course questions come into our mind. We could say, why does God allow suffering? If God exists, doesn’t He care?

Well, of course Jesus explains who God is, and the Aramaic word used is Abba, Father, and so He was saying, look, here is God. He is like a father, a daddy for you.

There are lots of things that we can understand – that the world is here, that God has made it. It does make sense. Our extraordinary universe explains to us so many things. It also tells us of a God who loves us as an individual. He does love you, and He does love me.

Let’s Pray

We thank you, Heavenly Father, that whilst you are an intricate God who created the world, the universe, we thank you for your love for us that is so personal and so real, and we say thank you for that in the name of Jesus. Amen.