Writing devotional thoughts focused on the creatures, systems, and processes that God has made is a daunting and scary task. Because God’s creations have endless variety, there is just so much to learn. The wealth and beauty of creative genius and the seemingly unfathomable complexity attracts, fascinates, awes, and teaches us much about the Creator. But even though we may know or think we know much about a topic, compared to what there is to know our knowledge is extremely limited. Late in life the renown philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and physicist Sir Isaac Newton put it this way: “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Biology is a difficult and constantly changing discipline. Biologists are doing their best to understand life – that most amazing and complex organization of stuff known to humanity. Half of the concepts that we may have studied and learned may be fairly accurate and correct understandings and half will be erroneous misconceptions. The only problem is that we simply don’t know which is which.
That reality shouldn’t keep us from learning all we can about everything that we can. However, we must hold our understandings gently and constantly maintain a teachable spirit. We may find that, as we visit with my friends, the more they actually know, the more humility they exhibit. A preacher humorously emphasized this concept as he declared, “When I tell myself that I understand what is going on, I need to remember to follow with, ‘Self, you are talking to an idiot!” Such reality-based humility is too often in short supply. One of the most influential early Christians, Augustine, bishop of Hippo Regius, said it this way: “Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.”
“Lord of the wise and the foolish, there are many things too amazing for us to understand. May it keep us humble and point us to You.”