When I was a kid growing up in the small town of Andrews, Texas, we had chickens in our backyard. It was something that my subdivision would definitely not allow today, but it was a great experience. While I learned responsibility, my mom bought the eggs for ten cents apiece, which was quite a bit more than they were worth!

Ever stop to look at slime? You know, the stuff that gooks up a run-down lake and makes a sticky film on stagnant water? It’s also found in streams and in the ocean. It’s really not all that pretty on the surface, but if you look closer…you can find God’s stained glass window. I was astonished when I found that simple diatom cells sometimes arrange themselves in beautiful colonies, such as the one shown in the center image above. These simple cells can form the most wondrous complex designs, all invisible without a microscope.

I have been thinking a lot lately about faith and creation. You might ask what in the heck these two things have in common. Well, much brighter minds than I have recognized there are at least some principles—not theories, not applications, but bedrock basic, fundamental observations about the way things work—that had to be tuned just right in order to experience life as we know it. One basic, underlying principle is the force of magnetism. Magnetism is one of those mysteries that we don’t completely understand, but we see it in everything from the atom to the solar system. If magnetism had been a little weaker or a little stronger, it is very doubtful that you would be reading or listening to this right now because, frankly, you probably would not exist. As you look at a magnetic field, you see that it has arches and looks like the spindles of actin in a mitotic figure. Why are these two events so similar? I have no idea, but it does makes you stop and go hmmm. If you have any clues, let me know at observations@designedonpurpose.com.

I was walking on a beautifully manicured lawn this afternoon. The blades of grass, each straining for more sunlight, looked familiar. Where else had I seen such structures? Then it hit me: the tightly-packed plants and their root system are a perfect analogy of the cellular membrane. Today, the term “grass roots” has come to mean something way different than the simple biological term. When you search for images of grass roots on the Internet, you get a collection of community activist groups. You’ve got your grass roots music, grass roots social changers and grass roots gun totin’ activists. But for the botanist, the root system of grass plants is an interconnected latticework underground. There is far more to the root system than meets the eye. And what is remarkable to the point of amazement is the similarity in appearance of my lawn to the membranes throughout life. See for yourself!

There was a feature on the airplane I recently flew on that I’d never seen. I guess it might have been there before, but I had never really noticed it. The seat in front of mine had a digital display noting our global location as we flew. This is really cool, because you can look out the window and try to pick out landmarks. But the thing I hadn’t noticed in the past was the temperature gauge. It read -63 degrees! This was remarkable to me because cosmologists (not the ladies that will give you a makeover, the real, live Carl Sagan types) tell us that a few degrees either way and our earth would be permanently frozen. Or so hot that the oceans would steam up and cause a permanent greenhouse effect, burning off all the water. And you don’t have to go up very far in the atmosphere to feel as if you are in Antarctica!

With the onset of spring in East Texas comes both beauty and misery. Like so much of life, along with the beautiful comes some ugly. Roses have thorns, plants have allergy-producing pollen, and with the warmer weather we have mosquitoes. And far beyond just being a general nuisance, they can carry deadly diseases. We are taught in the Bible that death, disease, and suffering are a result of sin and our separation from God. I guess that means there were no mosquitoes in Eden!

Rocks. Ever notice ‘em? I confess, I’ve never quite understood how interesting they really can be. Steve, my high school buddy, was a true rock hound and a budding geologist. He had a big collection of all kinds of crystals, igneous rocks, and those weird rocks that look like an egg on the outside and have beautiful growing things inside. I think they are called geodes. Now Steve drills for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. His passion paid off!

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. Romans 1:20