Perfect Word Pictures Reveal a Perfect God

Now we are certainly getting are feet wet a bit more! There are two specific ways in which God teaches us. First, there are words, spoken or written, that we read or hear from Scripture. Secondly, there are images that are wrought from the Scripture, from its word pictures, or by what we see or sense in the world around us. We use both to comprehend who God is, what He desires, and why He does what He does. Although this appears intricate, it is not complicated. In fact, its power rests in its simplicity. The strength of God’s plan is that each method of teaching relates to the other, supports each other, and is in agreement with each other. This is truly God’s perfect formula for inscribing what we need in all of life. This is God’s most wonderful method to teach us: We use words to describe the images we see. We use images to describe the words we read.

Within this most simple, yet most powerful formula, is everything we can imagine that He chooses to reveal about of His kingdom, encapsulated into this unique pattern of teaching and learning. We consistently hear or read the words off of a page, grasp the image, and intake the meaning. Word pictures that become images are the one wholly and vantaged manner to inject relevant and lasting meaning. Conversely, when we see an image and wish to transform that image into a teachable moment, we translate that image into word pictures through the process of figurative speech, which then forces us to verbalize what we just visualized!

The process in which we verbalize makes us build more accurate concepts and descriptions to relate to our listeners. This process continues to build as we add additional terms and expressions, over time, and plug them in as needed in life’s daily interactions, conversations, and presentations.

We are, in essence, constructing words into images and compressing images into words. Simply understanding the process can make us more aware of what’s on a page and what we are seeing. As I read, I want to build imagery. As I see, I want to describe. What an incredible simple plan! It is in the fullness of its implementation that will foster and multiply its effects.

Knowing this may make us slow down our reading as we look to increase our comprehension. As we meander through the creation, we can consider how God uses each and every particular piece of His creation. As an icebreaker for our youth, we would occasionally pass around a bag with a host of unrelated items…an eraser, shoelace, bottle of lotion, paint brush…and have them pull something out and share how this might relate to something in their life right now. Some answers were indeed quite unique; some answers just outright hilarious. But, this was just a great way to consider how to use a few things around us to describe a multitude of other things around us!

In this chapter, we will first explore God’s revelation through His dimensional creation, secondly through His creation seen in the natural world, thirdly through the material things that we as people have constructed and use in our daily lives, fourthly through life and death, and lastly through the Scriptures.

God’s Dimensional Creation
This is a particular part, although not always seen as separate from all of creation, but one that speaks uniquely and imaginatively to all of us over all of time. This is the part that gives us that “Ahhhh” moment of overwhelming conscription, bewilderment, and awesomeness in this far-reaching dimension. These are the images set before us that should simply overtake us, in and of themselves, at the sheer magnitude, or microscopicity, order, balance, and beauty of God’s universe. These are the incomprehendables of a God without limits.

It is by no accident that God so arranges things that cannot, and will not, be explained. Who can possibly comprehend the vastness of a universe without end? We measure in billions the stars, which are light years apart, all sitting in beautiful patterns in the sky. Yet, for everything that we can see, to the n’th degree in space, we cannot picture the total of this immensity. Who can grasp a universe that may well be sitting on the head of a pin for all we know? For what does without end look like?

We picture the planets, for those are things that we see. But what cannot be perceived is the particular pre-ordained order of these heavenly bodies. How is it they hold in such a perfect orbit? And the sun, earth, and moon are in a perfect visual shadow of each other, so that both a solar and lunar eclipse will take place, and thus provide us with a perfect historical calendar. Without the moon we would have no tides to clean our oceans. And how did air and water form? Oil? Wood? Stone? Good soil? Rain? Evaporation? And a sun that never burns up?

We look also at the smallest of sizes, those microscopic pieces of created order where velocity, gravity, and energy combine in an ever-diminishing minuteness until we cannot seem to find out what the smallest of particles are made. Molecules are a combination of atoms, which result from protons, neutrons, and electrons, all held together somehow by gluons. We discover that each of these three sub-atomic particles are a result of combining quarks, all with the involvement of fermions, leptons, bosons, and even more minute hypothetical particles. And what is the space between all of these? A “planck.” This is defined something along the lines of “the smallest theoretical limit of the shortest measurable space in the universe.” Even the formula representing this is beyond mere mortal comprehension!

As we look at cells, an entirely different picture of observations takes place. Most everyone has a basic concept of cell division. Many of us have seen the process by watching any number of videos available. As for those of us who are mesmerized by watching cells divide and go to work, we can also visualize the processes, of two cells becoming nearly thirty trillion highly adaptive and highly specialized cells in the adult human body.

With such advances in visual technology, we can actually follow closely the building of the human body from two small cells to a complete complexity of life form including organs, nerves, muscles, arteries, bones, skin, hair, joints, fingers and toes, intestines, lungs, a heart, a brain, and much, much more. The “what” of what is happening is quite observable in today’s world. We can also look closely at the “when,” as this little body has a schedule of assembly. Each piece is developed and attached right on time in this highly intricate process.

As we come to the how it becomes a bit more iffy, as we increasingly become more taken back that the process works at all! How in the world is this all happening? It’s the why of the entire process that gets interesting, quite astonishing, and yes, even unexplainable. Does this grab us and shake us up? These cells are dividing and building an entire empire of complexity with no one telling them why they should be doing what they are doing! They are just doing it!! And they are doing it with perfect timing, space, growth rates, system connections, and life maintenance.

There is 15 feet of intestines. There are 360 different joints. We are looking at some 60,000 miles of capillary systems. There are over 600 muscles. There are 78 separate organs. There is 35 miles of nerves. There are 206 bones. We look at the angles of the chin, ears, cheeks, nose, and lips to name but a few. The human body is a masterpiece of design and construction, including food and energy storage, air supplies, repair and maintenance systems, mobile transportation mechanisms to move the body, a sustainable heart and valve system, a thought and design center,