John Piper Devotional

The Marvel of Creation

God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. (1 Corinthians 15:38)

I have been picking up little things in Scripture that show God’s intimate involvement in creation.

For example, in 1 Corinthians 15:38, Paul is comparing how a seed is planted in one form and comes forth in another form with a “body” different from all other bodies. He says, “God gives it a body just as he wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own.”

This is a remarkable statement of God’s involvement in the way God designed each seed to bring forth its own unique plant (not just species but each individual seed!).

Paul is not teaching about evolution here, but he is showing how he takes God’s intimate involvement with creation for granted. He cannot imagine, evidently, that any natural process should be conceived without God’s doing it.

Again in Psalm 94:9, it says, “He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see?” The psalmist assumes that God was the designer of the eye and that he designed the way the ear is planted in the head to do its hearing work.

So when we marvel at the wonders of the human eye and the remarkable structure of the ear, we are not to marvel at the processes of chance but at the mind and the creativity of God.

Similarly in Psalm 95:5, “The sea is his for he made it; and his hands formed the dry land.” The involvement of God in making land and sea is such that the present sea is his.

It is not as though he in some impersonal way set it all in motion a billion years ago. Rather he is the one who owns it because he made it. It is today his handiwork and bears the marks of his creator claim on it, like a piece of artwork belongs to the one who painted it until he sells it or gives it away.

I point out these things not to solve all the problems surrounding the issues of origins, but to call you to be God-centered in your admiration of the wonders of the world.