Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. … Then the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground. He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person. [Genesis 1:3. 2:7 (NLT)]
Years ago, The Jerusalem Post published a joke about human arrogance. After considering all of humanity’s scientific progress, a group of scientists decided that God no longer was necessary. The chief scientist explained to God that man’s ability to clone people, manipulate atoms, build molecules, fly through space, create body parts with 3-D printers, and perform other miraculous feats meant God was unneeded and could be replaced by man. After patiently listening to the scientist, God suggested a human-making contest with only one rule: “We have to do it just like I did in the Bible.” Saying that was easy, the arrogant scientist bent over to pick up a handful of dust. “Put that down!” said God, while adding, “To do it my way, you have to make your own dust!”
Our vacation home in Idaho came complete with chickens and hen house. Every morning, the littlest grands would trek out to the hen house, check for eggs, and return with the makings of an omelet. I was relieved they never asked the age-old unanswerable question of “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” We need a chicken (actually two) to have a fertilized egg but we need a fertilized egg to make a chicken. This seemingly futile question has been discussed for thousands of years. The Greek philosopher Aristotle considered it but evaded the answer by saying that both egg and chicken went infinitely backwards and always existed. The oldest fossilized eggs are 190 million years old and the oldest fossilized birds are only 150 million years old so paleontologists might say the egg came first. A strict reading of Genesis, however, would lead us to conclude that the chicken came first because animals appeared on the 5th day of creation. It’s a silly question but people ask it because they want to understand how something can come from nothing.
When making the children’s omelets, we still needed the raw ingredients. Along with the eggs that came from chickens (that came from eggs), we needed butter and cheese from cows, salt from the sea, pepper from the drupe of a pepper plant (Piper nigrum}, and green peppers and onions that came from seeds sown by a farmer, as well as a frying pan, whisk, spatula, and gas stove. Although my seamstress friend creates stunning clothing, she needs the silk from the silkworm (that came from an egg) or the cotton from the cotton bush (that came from a seed) to do so. My wood-working friend creates beautiful furniture but he can’t do it without the wood that comes from an oak tree that comes from an acorn that originally came from the oak! This begs the question, “Which came first, the oak or the acorn?” As the arrogant scientist learned, mankind can’t create something from nothing!
God, however, created everything from nothing. He had no eggs for the chickens, acorns for the oaks, seeds for the apple trees, or pollen for the flowers. He had no hydrogen or oxygen for water and no sodium or chloride to add to the water for the sea! Simply put, God spoke all creation into existence. That’s a rather unsatisfactory answer for those who want a technical explanation but the Bible is a book of theology that tells us the who and not a book of science that tells us how. We’re not about to get any more details as to how chaos turned to order, a void came to be filled, and nothing became something. Whether it was the chicken or its egg that came first will always be a conundrum.
Although Jesus performed many miracles, when compared to the illusions performed by various well-known magicians, they aren’t all that impressive. Jesus emerged from the tomb on the third day but David Blaine buried himself alive in a plexiglass coffin under a 3-ton water-filled tank for seven days and nights! Calling Lazarus out of the tomb after several days was impressive but only his family and some mourners were there to see it. When David Blaine emerged from the 6-ton block of ice in which he’d been encased for over 63 hours, thousands in Times Square were there and even more watched it on television. Granted, Blaine fell short of his 72-hour goal but the man knows how to draw crowds! Couldn’t Jesus have done something similar?
Matthew and Mark tell of a second time Jesus fed a multitude. Jesus had been north of Galilee in Tyre and Sidon before going south to the Sea of Galilee and on to the region of the Ten Towns or Decapolis. Once there, a huge crowd assembled and set up camp around Jesus as He healed and preached. After three days on the hillside, the crowd ran out of provisions and Jesus voiced His concern. Just like the first time they were faced with a hungry crowd, the disciples don’t know what to do, even though the solution was standing right in front of them. After they found seven loaves and a few fish, Jesus miraculously turned that into a feast for 4,000 men (plus women and children) with seven large reed baskets of food remaining!
Other than His resurrection, the feeding of the 5,000 is the only one of Jesus’ miracles recorded in all four gospels. Wanting some quiet time, Jesus and the disciples went by boat to a remote area near Bethsaida. Because the crowd followed them, Jesus spent the rest of day healing and teaching. When the disciples asked Jesus to send the people home so they could eat, Jesus said to feed them. All four accounts agree that only five loaves and two fish were available, that 5,000 men (along with women and children) ate as much as they wanted, and that the left-overs filled a dozen wicker hand-baskets.
Devotions of the Heart 