Is This All There is?

Description

Preview of the book

Sooner or later, we all reach a point in life when we wonder if this is as good as it gets. Is your current life the reward you expected for all your hard work? The daily grind has likely taken its toll. What about the American dream? A better life? Yes, there are opportunities to make money, and the dream requires hard work, but when do you get to the rewarding part? When can you start to enjoy the fruit of your labors? When you are 70? 80? By then you’ll be too tired and worn out to enjoy anything. Besides, you probably don’t want to end up like most old people you know.

Do you see a purpose for your life—one that gives meaning to your life and hope for the future? Are you living out that purpose, or are you merely existing, having settled for simply going through the socially accepted motions? Have you grown tired of looking good on the outside so people will think you’ve got it altogether? If you’re like most people, you don’t have a clue what “it” is. Whatever it is, it’s definitely not altogether. It’s all over the place. Sometimes you think you’re the only one feeling so empty and disconnected. Everyone else seems to be doing pretty well. At least, that’s how they appear. If Facebook is any indication of reality, all your “friends” are doing great. Life is one big party.

But what if they feel just like you? Their lives aren’t that different from yours. They’re dealing with the same stuff you battle against. Are they putting on a show, too? It’s too painful to think that you are the only one who is struggling. Then you see it—the look in their eyes. You have heard that the eyes are the gateway to the soul, revealing what’s really going on deep inside. What you see in their eyes doesn’t reflect their Facebook posts. It’s not even close.

So, we’re all in this together, but what good is that if nobody is willing to get real and admit his or her struggles? These thoughts have probably revealed a part of you that you never knew existed. It’s the part that is able to see beyond the everyday details to the bigger picture. Why has it taken you so long to get in touch with this partof you? Have you gotten so wrapped up in life’s daily demands that you failed to see anything “beyond”?

Think about life’s big picture for us all. Are we born just to learn some stuff, get a good job, raise a family, and then die? Really? Are we to find fulfillment in doing the best we can? What if our best isn’t good enough, and who decides? Is fulfillment found in enjoying what we do? What if life has us doing something

He Holds Everything Together

Jesus was free to do whatever He wanted with what He had created since it belonged to Him. We can grasp the concept even though we may rebel at the thought. But, as we have seen, He somehow holds all things together. This one simple statement (Colossians 1:17) is worth pondering. Ever wonder what keeps everything from flying apart? Considering the amount of motion that goes on at the molecular level and at the giant inter-galactic level, isn’t it amazing that everything stays right where it needs to be to guarantee its existence? Once again, scientific lawsmay explain what we have observed, but they fail to explain the cause.Clearly, there is amazing order in the universe and its stability is beyond human comprehension.

Until recently, scientists have been unable to offer any intellectually satisfying hypotheses to explain what holds everything together. That all changed with the recent discovery of the protein molecule which has been called “laminin.” Through scientific investigation, researchers have discovered that this molecule exists for the sole purpose of holding everything together. It holds our skin together. It holds every cell in our body together. In fact, it has been described as the “re-bar” that holds everything in the universe together. Here’s where it really gets interesting. Great magnification reveals that this molecule is in the shape of a cross! Jesus really does hold everything together.

He Reconciles Everything to Himself

God also uses Jesus to reconcile all things to Himself. When sin entered the beautiful and peaceful world God had created through Jesus, the corruption sin brought wasn’t limited to mankind. All of creation was affected. Corruption and decay took over and things began to die. Sin affected the weather, the relationship between man and the animals and animals to otheranimals—everything that came into being since Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s clear command. Yes, the account of the first two humans in the Garden of Eden is true. Everything we see today, catastrophes, hurricanes, earthquakes, wars, hostilities, growing hatred and lawlessness, are all the result of sin. The account in Genesis explains everything we are now experiencing. The Law of Entropy is a consequence of sin. Sin is the cause of the new revelations, the more it seemed that natural selection failed toexplain the intricate complexities of life. Changes in the features of a species (like bird beaks) is common but is quite different from changes in the species. Natural selection failed to explain the origin of the organism itself.

Those intricate complexities revealed the startling revelation of what actually exists and happens in a single cell. Advanced technology (with 50,000 X magnification) had revealed microscopic worlds so small that a thimble full of cultured liquid could contain more than 4 billion single-celled bacteria, each packed with circuits, assembly instructions, and miniature machines, the complexity of which far exceeded anything Darwin could have imagined. Within the cells are molecular machines—tiny molecular trucks that carry supplies from one end of the cell to the other. There are machines that capture the energy from sunlight and turn it into usable energy. There are as many molecular machines in the human body as there are minutely specific functions the body performs.

The Amazing Bacterial Flagellum

One of these tiny machines is the bacterial flagellum which mimics the design of an outboard motor. These molecular motors that drive bacteria through liquid depend on a system of intricately arranged mechanicalparts. Because of the way these tiny and intricate parts work together, the flagellar motor has been labeled the most efficient machine in the universe. Some run at 100,000 RPMs and can stop on a dime. They are connected to sensors that provide constant feedback from the environment. They can shift directions in a millisecond. They are water-cooled motors with forward and reverse gears, a rotor and a stator, a drive shaft, and a propellor.

Eventually, these scientists concluded that natural selection could not account for the vast complexities in a single cell because of a principle one of them coined as “irreducible complexity.” In essence, it identified the parts of a system that must be present simultaneously for the system to work. If one part is missing, it will not function. The problem for evolutionary theory is that it requires that all changes come about gradually over time. This tiny outboard motor has to be assembled all at once or it will never exist, never perform its function within the organism, and can never be passed on to the next “upgrade.”