This week, I spent a lot of time going over our vacation photos in an effort to prepare a slideshow of combined photos from everyone who went with us to Yellowstone a few weeks ago. I have viewed, edited and deleted pictures until I'm about sick of it! However, even after all that, I was struck with awe all over again. Can you imagine standing on top of the world, or so it seemed from an overlook of the Rocky Mountains, and thinking that all the wonders spread out below you were a freak accident of nature? The beautiful sun setting behind majestic mountain peaks, the rivers, valleys, fields of wild flowers to rival any garden and all of that animal life somehow just came into being? I don't get it. Just standing there, made me see and feel the might of the LORD our Creator. It made me feel like weeping and singing for joy all at the same time. I seem to remember a sermon or bulletin referring to the "watchmaker" before, but thought it might be worth repeating.

Deniese

The Watchmaker (Dave Hawkins)

A long time ago, on a planet so bare, some water and dirt got mixed up with air, some sand and some rocks. To make it just right, the stage was a// set in the deep of the night. A bolt of white lightning, a great peal of thunder and suddenly there was a marvelous wonder. The rocks yielded metal and sand turned to glass, and as the years flew a new thing came to pass. The metal formed gears, the glass a watch face and little by little things fell into place. The parts come together just like a good rhyme with ticks and with tocks and with hands that tell time. A beautiful watch began ticking one day, formed all by itself in a wonderful way. A ridiculous story you say with a grin, impossible, laughable...surely a sin! A watch needs a watchmaker that's plain to see, a designer and builder that makes it for me. Now all life is made of some interesting stuff, cells of all shapes, like blobs filled with fluff. But looks are deceiving, and what we find there are factories and highways and gadgets to spare. Assembly lines, robots, electrical cable, libraries, software just look if you are able. The marvels we see with a microscope stare make a watch look so simple we dare not compare. Now the doctors from Oxford say cells come by chance, from goo down to you in a beautiful dance. What's wrong with their thinking to have such odd notions, that cells could just happen through dirt and warm oceans. A cell and its wonders amaze all who see, and a cell like a watch, by chance cannot be. Those cells can build hummingbirds, agile and free, bumble bees, snails, my backyard oak tree. A woodpecker built with a jackhammer nose, lightning bugs, monkeys, a beautiful rose. And beetles with bombs give frogs a surprise, chameleons with camouflage and some weird eyes. All nature on earth is so perfectly fine, we have to admit that its all by design. And our maker owns everything both great and small. He's the masterful watchmaker, Lord over all.