The Master Designer

Genesis 1:1 (NET) - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Since I was a small child, I have always had a fascination with clocks, watches, calendars, sundials and anything else that has the capacity to track the passage of time.

Of these, I have a particular fondness for watches.

I appreciate the mechanics involved, the interplay of the various gears, the gear ratios, the springs, the tiny screws that hold the assembly together and so on.

In fact, had I been born with better eyesight, my fascination could possibly have turned into a different career.

As it stands, I have a career I enjoy and timepieces have turned into a hobby.

What has this all this to do with faith? For me, the answer is a great many things.

In the early nineteenth century, William Paley made a theological argument for the existence of God in what has come to be known as the watchmaker analogy.

In this analogy, Paley stated that if you found a watch, you would have to conclude that it had been designed because it is "complex". In other words, for the watch to exist, there has to be a watch maker.

It then follows that because the universe is s complex, it too must have a designer, namely God.

When I look at the complexity of the universe, I agree with Paley’s analogy.

Isaiah 45:12 (NET) - I made the earth, I created the people who live on it. It was me - my hands stretched out the sky, I give orders to all the heavenly lights.

There are some additional lessons in faith I have picked up from watches along the way.

For example, the first thing people usually notice about a watch is its face.

These faces range from black to white and include every color in between.

Each color is beautiful.

The same is true of human faces as well, as all are made in the image of God.

Genesis 1:26 (NET) - Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth."

Another feature easily noticed has also been given a human identity.

The hands.

Like their human counterparts, the simplest watches have two hands. One to track the hours and one to track the minutes.

Those that track other things require more hands to do so.

Some have a third hand to track the seconds.

Others require even more hands to track the month, the day, the date and so on.

Others have built in stop watches and require yet more hands.

Interestingly, each of these extra features have come to be known as complications.

I find this to be a remarkable coincidence because often our lives become "complicated" and when they do, a helping "hand" from a friend is always welcome.

Proverbs 3:27 (NET) - Do no withhold good from those who need it, when you have the ability to help.

The outward appearance of the watch is not the only thing that is important to those who appreciate them.

We also care about the what is inside as well, in particular, the movement.

What is inside says a tremendous amount about the watch.

Likewise, what is inside a person says a lot about the person.

1 Samuel 16:7 (NET) - But the LORD said to Samuel, "Don’t be impressed by his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. God does not view things the way men do, People look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Finally, sometimes watches stop running or stop running well.

When that happens, they do not operate at the level at which they were designed to operate.

Sometimes this happens as the result of a fall.

At that point, a watchmaker or a highly skilled watch repairman must be consulted in order to get the watch operating in the way in which it was designed to operate.

It is very similar with people.

We do not operate at the level at which we were designed to operate.

This happened as the result of another and more serious kind of Fall.



God, the master designer, can always be counted on to fix even the most broken of us.


Blessings,
Jim Pokorny
The Other Brother Jim
Look for me at http://faithfulfeetteam.blogspot.com/ on Friday, February 17, 2012.
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I’ll be back here on Friday, February 24, 2012.
Schedule subject to change.