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A Collection Of Incredible Creations

In researching and writing for my next book, “Everything Speaks: Learning the Language of Creation”, I have been constantly amazed at the detail and design of the world God put us in. Even now, there are songbirds outside my window flying effortlessly on perfectly crafted wings. There are plants that began as tiny seeds, and they’re out there converting sunlight into energy and releasing oxygen for me to breathe. There are worms aerating the soil and clouds watering the forests and galaxies are spinning and molecules are bonding and King David was right when he wrote that:

“The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.” – Psalm 19:1-4

In the book, I want to explore how we can understand what God is saying to us through the things he has made. But for now, I’d like to share a few aspects of creation that I have found especially fascinating as I’ve researched. First of all, trees. Did you know that they can talk to each other? Research has shown that that there is much more going on in the forest than meets the eye:

Inheriting Righteousness

Have you ever thought about how much you’ve inherited from others? Your life is inherited, to begin with. Your way of life is inherited as well, from those who have gone before you and built up the world to be what it is—who developed the technologies, coordinated the supply chains, and built the infrastructure that shapes our daily lives. Most of the knowledge we learn in school was passed down from the generations before us, as are many of our recipes, our holiday traditions, and our sports. And of course there are bad things, too, like predisposition to diseases, cultural blind spots, broken systems, and so much more. For good or bad, our lives are profoundly shaped by all that we have inherited. Profoundly, but not completely.

The Challenge Of Choosing Between Bitter And Better

There may only be one letter between bitter and better, but like street signs on the same post, the two words point us in opposite directions. And these signposts are planted firmly, with the same two arrows, at every difficult junction we face on the road of life. No matter how well we may have chosen in the past, or how poorly, the same choice always presents itself all over again: will we let the difficulties of life make us better? Or bitter?

It’s obvious, isn’t it? One choice is literally named “better.” So that’s clearly the choice we’ll always make. Right? Why would we willingly choose to travel a bitter road when a better option is always available to us? The answer is this: we don’t always believe the signposts.

Another Chance (a poem)

It’s been months since I paid any attention to the long-lost autumn leaves that are lying in the grass alongside the roads and paths that I walk on. The glorious colour they impressed me with when they fell is nothing but a memory now. Then again, have you seen what frost can do to a leaf on the ground? This morning, every vein of every leaf is highlighted in white—the intricate patterns stand out in shimmering relief—and once again my eyes are drawn in renewed wonder. A few weeks ago, I would have told you that these leaves were far beyond their glory days. This morning, they shine unexpectedly with a new and different kind of glory. Our Creator can make beauty shine from a pile of dead leaves, and anywhere he wants, and long after we’ve given up hope of it ever coming again.

Stop Looking For Friends, And Start Making Them

The treasure of true friendship is some of the richest, most valuable wealth in the whole world. If financial poverty eventually makes life unsustainable, friendship poverty makes it unbearable. By true friendship, of course, I don’t just mean acquaintances you enjoy a laugh with every once in a while, or online “friends” you can share pictures of your dinners with. I mean the real thing. The deep thing. The close thing. The uninhibited, understanding, unhurried and unbreakable thing. I mean the people who stick even when other people let go, the people who love you even after you’ve done wrong—and too much to let you get away with it. I mean the people who laugh with you about stupid inside jokes and cry with you about losses and disappointments and who know exactly what you’re thinking just by the faces you make. I mean the people you can trust enough to share life with—not just the social media highlight reel life, but the really real life, in all the mess and joy and shame of it. Friendships like these are more valuable than Blackbeard’s buried treasure (which is still buried, by the way). If we discovered his treasure hoard without ever developing true friendships, our lives would still be impoverished. Which raises the question: how do we find the treasure of true friendship?

A Compass For Our Changing World

We’re a few days into another new year, and nobody knows what the next 12 months will bring. What we do know is this: the world is changing fast. Culture is changing. Economics are changing. Demographics are changing. Beliefs are changing. As the world shifts around us, there’s plenty of disagreement about which of these changes are moving us forward, which are holding us back, and what the path of progress should look like. That’s a vital question. Years ago, C.S. Lewis made an important point about it:

Top Books Of 2023

I’d like to finish the year out by sharing the six best books I read this year, and some recommendations from my family as well. These are not books that came out this year—some of them are old, but I read them this year and enjoyed them. You might, too.

A Christmas Selection Box 2023

It’s Christmas, and in Ireland that means chocolate selection boxes are multiplying everywhere. It’s a great tradition—who wouldn’t like a box filled with a variety of different chocolates to enjoy over the holidays? Today I’m joining in with the spirit of this tradition. I can’t give you chocolate, but I’ve collected a variety of treats for you from around the internet. Enjoy!

Christmas Should Humble Us

Christmas is wonderful. The lights, the decorations, the music, the cookies, the nativity scenes, all of it. And in the nativity scenes, a baby. A baby who was the High King of Heaven. In a feeding trough. It’s a shocking picture, really, when you think about the humility of Christ. To step down from the literal throne of Heaven itself, take on our humanity, and enter our world as an infant born into poverty among an oppressed people is hands down the most extreme display of humility in all of history. Nothing else comes close.

Don’t Let All The Conspiracies Be Evil

The headlines are usually bad. Nations conspiring against nations, scandals and corruption in governments, corruption and abuse in charities, organised crime, businesses cheating the system, people cheating each other, and so on. It seems there are a lot of people in this world working hard to devise evil plans and then working together to carry them out. Which is nothing new. Isaiah wrote about the same thing hundreds of years before the first Christmas:

“…the schemes of the schemer are evil;
He devises wicked plans
To destroy the poor with lying words,
Even when the needy speaks justice.” – Isaiah 32:7 (NKJV)