Whether you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Or Allah. Or Buddha. Or you don’t believe in any higher power. The worlds of science and faith are coming closer than ever before to some agreement on the origins of the universe. If it was a “big bang” or a spoken word, the growing consensus is that everything points to a creative designer…that there is a design and a purpose to the universe.

Now… I’m not a scientist, just a simple thinker. If once there was nothing, and all of sudden there was something, then the law of cause and effect was birthed. Behind the nothing, a creative designer must have dwelt somewhere, and decided to create…right? Did God, perhaps as our creative designer, speak all things into existence? Or did God, or some non-descript thing spark a bang, creating matter that is still expanding, making the universe ever larger?

You can decide between the two, or come up with your own explanation. I’ll put my money on God. I guess that’s about as much as my mind can grasp. Nobody was there, except…well, you know whom.

When I look out at the heavens, I ponder something equally, perhaps even more, amazing. I marvel that every planet and moon in our solar system has been placed in perfect sequence, orbiting around the sun, spinning on its own axis in perfect time. At the same time, the moon orbits the earth, as it spins on its axis, never allowing us to see its far side. And so it goes beyond.

From the creative bang, it’s hard for me to imagine that the total chaos from an explosion fell into perfect balance. Maybe there’s a scientific explanation, but I’ve decided to trust that the Creator is holding all things in place…somehow.

I know…that’s a lot of faith. But no more than believing the opposite.

The great American essayist and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the “Sage of Concord,” who was born on May 25, 1803, viewed these mysterious matters in similar fashion. He said:

“All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

The older I become, the more childlike is my faith and trust that there was a grand design in all things created. Like Annie sang, “The sun will come up…tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow…there’ll be sun.” And so we’ll have another tomorrow to marvel at the amazing mysteries that science continues to reveal about the heavens. None of which can disprove God…or creative design.

I’m so small…and the universe defies imagination.