As a young biology student at the University of Missouri, I started paying attention to leaves in a whole new way. I studied the process of photosynthesis (in minute detail), learning how green plants convert energy from the sun and in the process split carbon dioxide molecules into carbon and oxygen. Enjoy a deep breath—leaves are why you’re alive.
Many of my professors believed in a godless universe and pointed to evolutionary theory to explain how biological systems came about. They presented theories explaining the development of complexity from primordial soup. I sat in their classrooms year after year carefully studying and evaluating their arguments.
Then I arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion.
The more I contemplated the cross-section of a leaf, or went cross-eyed trying to memorize the Kreb’s cycle, the complexity of it all overwhelmed me. Something greater than a cosmic accident must be behind this complicated, intricate, life-supporting planet.
Many others arrive at the same view. Paul clarified: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse (Romans 1:20).
David spoke even more bluntly: The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
God left his fingerprints all around us. I found the more I studied, moving on from plants to vertebrate anatomy and embryology and histology, the more I sensed a divine hand in the midst of the wonders of life, and indeed in the midst of my life.
Nature presents as wonderfully, mind-numbingly complex. Pick up a leaf—you hold in your hands powerful evidence of God’s eternal power and divine nature.
Psalm 53 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022
Photo by Annie Spratt
Amen, the more you look at the complexity of creation the more it points to God, just do the math and the chances of this just happening don’t exist.