Divine Design

I am baffled by those who say there is no God. I am completely bewildered that doubting men can look upon creation and not wonder about the hand that formed it. Creation is mysterious in its intricacy and mind-bending delicacy. With only their eyes as examination tools, man began the task of dissecting creation in his attempt to disprove God's existence. As knowledge increased, so did man's ability to see further into his realm with instruments that brought creation's core within sight. As one horizon was reached, man was driven to reach another. But with each advanced step into the vastness of the universe and its solitary inhabitants, man is still unable to pinpoint the beginning, the source, or the reason for our existence and to explain away the One Who created it.

Sitting in church one Sunday, the Pastor asked the congregation to open their Bibles to a particular passage. As I did so, I discovered lying between the worn and note-riddled pages a single feather I had placed there. While walking my dogs one morning, I had chanced upon the feather and because of its beauty, had picked it up and carried it home. It had once adorned the wing of a Flicker, an often despised bird because of its insect-seeking habit of rapping holes in the walls and roofs of houses. For several moments, my mind wandered away from the sermon as I gazed down upon the delicate orange and brown feather I held. My fingers caressed its softness and traced the pattern the colors made. I felt a strange peace wash over me as I examined what I knew to be something beyond mere chance or cosmic accident.

As I reveled in this brief interlude, the feather gently held between my fingers, I marveled at the completeness of it. The solitary feather bore a pattern solely its own, indistinguishable from the other feathers that once lay beside it to define the whole bird's appearance. It was a single part of the whole, an essential piece of the Flicker's pattern that clothed it and made it unlike other birds. Without it, it would not be complete. And because of each feather's unique and necessary pattern blending one into another, if the feather was removed, the overall design of the bird would be flawed. I saw within this one feather a power and a force beyond anything man could design with his own imagination. Our eyes for detail do not extend to that of God's Who created out of complexity and love. He saw perfection and completeness in every detail of the Flicker and as He fashioned it, His desire was to not have it any other way.

I am in awe of a God Who is able to create with such intricacy. No artist on the face of God's earth is able to create such beauty. The things man makes are only imitations of Divine design. The artist is unable to paint each individual feather's interior pattern as his brush strokes create the outward appearance of the bird on his canvas. His abilities are two dimensional, inhibiting him from reproducing what the Master Craftsman has created on His universal canvas. He can examine each separate feather and copy its pattern, but he can't combine them into the whole as our Maker did.

Man need no longer peer into microscopes and telescopes to explain his existence. He only needs to return to the elementary tool God gave him when he was created by Him. He only needs to open his eyes and behold the beauty of God's Divine Design in all of creation. I did. I found it in a single feather.


Copyright 2007 Karen L. Brahs