Words by Mike Gordon
A year ago, I was on the road speaking at a few Christian conferences and churches in Dubai. For one of my days off, I decided to go skydiving. The major problem with this is that I’m extremely afraid of heights. However, I decided to sign up anyways and hope for the best.
When the day came to jump, I was calm in front of people, but terrified inside. Who would be crazy enough to jump out of an airplane 13,000 feet in the air? We took off, and I was doing pretty good until they opened the door. Plane doors are not supposed to open in the air. This is something I had not experienced before.
Now I was looking at…
The clouds.
The sun.
The earth.
The sea.
Wow is the only way to describe this view. I have never seen the world like this before. In that moment it brought a new level of understanding to how precious life is as I looked at God’s creation. Life is a gift from Him, and what He created is so much bigger than we can truly understand.
When the Bible says God created the heavens and the earth, I believe that. Yet we live in a culture today in North America that wants to deny this truth. The odds of life existing here on earth is next to impossible without some creator’s touch. We have hundreds and hundreds of precise measurements that help sustain life here on planet earth.
The earth is 149.6 million kilometres away from the sun.
The earth spins at 1668.9 kilometres per hour.
The earth’s atmosphere is 21 percent oxygen.
The earth tilts at an angle of 23.5 degrees.
Imagine hundreds and hundreds of configured numbers and measurements which all together equals life here on planet earth.
Now imagine if just one of those numbers changed.
150.6 kilometres instead of 149.6
1768.8 kilometres per hour instead of 1668.8
21.9 percent oxygen instead of 20.9
24.5 degrees instead of 23.5
If just one of those numbers changed out of the hundreds of precise measurements, there would be no life as we know it on planet earth. How could that be an accident or a random chance? Yet, so many do not accept that God is behind everything that we see. The clouds, the sun, the earth, the water. They believe there is no plan behind this, yet they too are searching for deeper meaning because we all sense that we have been given this gift of life.
I do believe God did create everything, and thought about me…you…us before He even started putting everything together. I believe knowing you were created by God and how precise life is brings value, meaning, purpose, identity, acceptance and love into your life. Isn’t that what our culture is truly searching for?
The more I understand Christianity in connection with God’s creating hand, the more I begin to understand how valuable I truly am. I do have purpose on this planet and I am loved by the one who made it, and if it took standing on the side of an airplane to bring a deeper understanding of this truth then it was totally worth it.