“Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works of God.” Job 37:14
The book of Job centers on a man who has lost everything… his home, his livelihood, and his children. In despair, Job wishes he had never been born and questions God’s reasoning in it all. In the 37th chapter of this book, Elihu is asking Job how he can take issue with God, and admonishes him to remember who God is by taking time to think about all the things God has done. Elihu urges Job to calm down and reflect upon the works of God seen in nature, things that man cannot explain or control.
These works are described as “wondrous.” According to several online dictionaries, the word “wondrous” is defined as “inspiring a feeling of delight; that is to be marveled at; astounding, or amazing.” Sometimes we need to take a step back and allow time to reverently ponder the “wondrous works of God.”
Consider these.
- One tiny cell replicates itself and then begins to differentiate in its duplication to eventually form a human being with different organ systems that work perfectly together for a lifetime.
- Planet Earth revolves around the sun at the perfect distance to sustain life. A little bit more one way or the other in its orbit would alter the planet’s ability to support any type of living organism.
- Plant life was designed to produce oxygen as a waste product, which humans and animals need to live. Meanwhile, humans and animals produce carbon dioxide as a waste product, and that is a key part of the photosynthetic process of plants.
- God created newborn baby kangaroos (the size of a grain of rice to a jelly bean) with the instinct to crawl up its mother’s abdomen and into a huge pouch to locate the spot from which it can attach itself and obtain nourishment to continue its development.
- When our skin is damaged, it can mend itself, often without leaving any trace of the injury. It also helps regulate body temperature, releases waste products, acts as a barrier to harmful things, protects against UV radiation, produces vitamin D, and allows us to evaluate our environment through sensations such as heat, pressure, and pain.
- Nitrogen is a necessary component for life that is found in our atmosphere (78%), but it is in an unusable form. Through precipitation, nitrogen is converted to a form than can be used by plants, and thus life continues.
- Everything in our body gets time to rest, even if it’s just for a small amount of time. Everything that is, except the heart. Once the heart begins beating, it continues nonstop. It can be overworked and abused, but it continues beating on the average of 72 times a minutes throughout a person’s lifetime. No other muscle can do this.
- Waves of energy travel through the air, hit a tiny flap of tissue in your head, transmits those vibrations through bone and fluid to a tiny piece of nervous tissue that takes it to your brain which interprets that as sound.
These works of God are often taken for granted or attributed to an evolutionary accident. It’s time to look at these and many more for what they actually are – wondrous works of God!
Perhaps we should all take Elihu’s advice to Job.
There’s the wonder of sunset at evening,
The wonder as sunrise I see;
But the wonder of wonders that thrills my soul
Is the wonder that God loves me.
There’s the wonder of springtime and harvest,
The sky, the stars, and the sun;
But the wonder of wonders that thrills my soul
Is a wonder that’s just begun.
O, the wonder of it all! The wonder of it all!
Just to think that God loves me.
O, the wonder of it all! The wonder of it all!
Just to think that God loves me
(from “The Wonder of It All” by George Beverly Shea)
“And they were all amazed, and they glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, We have seen strange things to day.” Luke 5:26
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What wondrous works come to your mind when you think of God?