
|
Today's Quote
|
|
Today's Verse
|
|
Daily Wisdom
|
The bushman trips over a stone, finds it, puts it in a bag around his neck, and runs on. The stone had the power to arrest his flight but he now has the stone and its power. With the stone and all the other power objects in his medicine bag he stalks the lion, finds it, and kills it with slender pole with a stone spear head attached. He scatters hairs from the lion's pelt around his shelter to appease the storm gods and show them his power. When he dies, he believes the spirit of the lion will carry him into the afterlife.
The bushman has never read a book or studied philosophy but he knows that he and his fellows are not alone in the universe. He believes in supernatural powers and tries to make peace with the gods.
From the ancient bush to the modern metropolis people look to the heavens and see the divine. Though there are those who boldly announce their disbelief in anything beyond self, they are so aware of belief in the divine that they often give their lives to the announcing and demonstrating of their denial.
Atheists often spend more time fighting belief in God than many believers do in considering the implications of their belief. God seems to take hold of our lives whether we accept him or deny him. Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastics 3:11, "He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end," and in Psalms 19:1 "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands."
Man cannot escape his confrontation with eternity because God has placed the seed in his mind and the evidence in the universe. Kohlburg, a Harvard professor, developed a fascinating theory of the stages of moral development. As he described the stages from one to seven, his seventh stage portrayed a level of moral development that he could only call an "ultimate being." He could not struggle with right and wrong without encountering the very God he claimed not to accept as real. Why? God had placed the thought in his heart and he could not escape it.
The evidence is around us, the scriptures reinforce it, and experience illustrates that there is something eternal behind the universe in which we live.
