The God of Fire
I know the guy who invented fire. Even crazier than that, he cares enough to know the likes of me.
Microscopic atoms of carbon are stored up in the trunks and branches of trees to be harvested by bearded men in flannel shirts. Mighty giants felled by the head of an axe, sawn into pieces, and split apart to be used for another purpose. Designed and orchestrated so perfectly, as fuel to react with oxygen and heat in such a way as to bring to life bright tongues that dance across the wood’s charring surface. The night is driven back by its light and warmth. Little by little the dance slows and the flames settle into coals that softly glow as the wood is consumed. Consumed but not destroyed. No, only transformed as carbon combines with oxygen and rises as smoke into the night, up towards the stars that shine above.
Light-years away the same process is happening on an infinitely larger scale. The light that washes over a quiet campsite from the middle of stone ring and the heat that warms a cozy living room from its hearth are but miniature models of the grandeur that we see in the stars on a cloudless night. What we see as only pinpricks of light that penetrate the night sky are really as extravagantly and intricately detailed as the flames that dance around the edges of firewood. The same tongues dance across the surface of the stars where at temperatures of millions of degrees, hydrogen molecules are fused together into helium molecules releasing heat and light that travel across the universe back to earth to be beheld by the eye of a 19-year-old kid sitting by a fire in his backyard strumming a guitar.
And I know the One who made it all.
It wasn’t the laws of physics that determined how flammability and exothermic reactions would behave in order to provide this means of light and heat amidst darkness. No, it is intelligent design by the hand of a good Creator that so perfectly and intricately orchestrated these things for a purpose: so that man would see their beauty and that it would point him back to the glory and majesty of his loving Father.
When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Despite all of the beautiful things that God has so perfectly created, from the stars in the heavens, to a small fire on the earth below, and everything in between, still he is mindful of the likes of me. Man, the only creature that would be so bold as to consider himself greater than the Creator and rebel against him, is still cared for, still loved by the One whom he so wickedly betrayed.
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
Though marred by the stains our own grievous sins against a holy God, we are nonetheless the crown of his Creation clothed in the glory and honor of the image of the Creator himself. As loudly as all Creation in its vast beauty screams of the glory of its Maker, its worship will always fall short without a tongue to articulate its praises. Without a mind to comprehend just a bit of an infinite God. Without a heart to love him and without a soul to rejoice in his vast love for us and in all that he has done.
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth.
Psalm 8