In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1-2, ESV)
Of the many things golfers can forget, one is taking the time to soak it all in. We walk to the tee box, see where our tee markers are, put a peg in the ground, pick our target, take our stance, make our waggle, then take our swing.
Forgetting to notice the beauty of the hole in front of us and how it is situated in the overall landscape of the other seventeen holes is all too common. Failing to pause, breathe deeply, and scan the horizon of a golf course is symptomatic of a much deeper malady—we are in far too big a hurry!
Stepping back for a moment to take in a golf course’s beauty and complex design should be “par for the course.” For most of us, the level of creativity, attention to detail, and the many other factors that go into golf course design are way above our pay grade. However, that shouldn’t prevent us from appreciating the artistry and innovation resulting from golf course engineering.
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Our universe is immensely vast and growing, indescribably complex, majestically beautiful, and filled with splendid monuments with our Creator’s signature prominently displayed. To miss these facts or to ignore these realities is willful blindness.
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With any amount of reflection, no one sees a Nicklaus, Fazio, Ross, MacKenzie, or Palmer course and concludes these majestic courses just appeared as the consequence of wind, rain, erosion, and time. Anyone with the slightest amount of rational capacity knows it took a very bright team to design and build it.
These golf course architects spend countless hours in heavy intellectual lifting to shape the raw material provided by our Creator and transform it into a beautiful test of golf. Consequently, they deserve recognition, honor, and gratitude.
In the same way, we often fail to stop and take notice of the grand design of the universe we inhabit. Our universe is immensely vast and growing, indescribably complex, majestically beautiful, and filled with splendid monuments with our Creator’s signature prominently displayed. To miss these facts or to ignore these realities is willful blindness.
For example, Richard Dawkins, an infamous atheist, in an interview with Ben Stein, recently and reluctantly, admitted the following, “I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that [design] if you look at the detail; details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer.” Sadly, this is a far cry from admission on his part that this “designer” is the God of Scripture.
Scripture, famously, begins with “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Based on many other texts in Scripture, we know that God created “ex nihilo”— that is, out of nothing. Furthermore, we know the earth was “formless and void” in those early hours. That is, the world was uninhabitable.
Beginning in verse three of Genesis chapter one, we discover the Creator shaping and filling his newly minted heavens and earth. God was bringing the cosmos out of chaos, order out of disorder.
He was forming an inhabitable world conducive to his intentions to hand over the day-to-day operations to Adam and Eve eventually. This first couple was to be stewards of an earth created by God but intentionally left unfinished for mankind to “work and keep it.”
The Creator who designed the universe is the God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) who created humanity. That God had a purpose in designing the world and all those in it should go without debate.
The question(s) that confronts us is this—Why has God created me? For what purpose has he made me? Have I given myself to seek out why he designed me?
Prayer – God, illuminate my mind and heart to know and live out the purposes for which you created me.