Thursday, February 2, 2023

Creation Moment 2/3/2023 - God's Skyscrapers vs. Man's Skyscrapers

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
Psalm 1:1- 3
 
"Trees are given a prominent position in God’s Word. Psalm 1 compares a man who bases his life on God’s law to a tree growing close to streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. 

Compare a tree with a skyscraper, often seen as a supreme example of human achievement. A skyscraper begins with a plan,
compiled by a team of architects and engineers. 
Even a very large tree begins with a tiny seed, often no bigger than a pinhead. But it is crammed with complex programmed information that controls its development into a living giant.
 
It takes a mountain of materials such as cement, sand, and steel to be brought to the site to build a skyscraper
But the tree seedling accomplishes the build-up of its body—the root system, the bole (trunk) and the crown—on site, just utilizing raw materials surrounding it. It uses the water delivered by the rain, the carbon dioxide and the oxygen from the surrounding air, and the nutrients dispersed through the soil around its roots. 
 
Not only that, but the energy that makes possible the building of its impressive structure does not have to be generated elsewhere and channeled to the building site. The energy of the sun is captured by special organs of the trees, called leaves. These small, green, and mostly flat, leathery structures contain thousands of minute but highly sophisticated factories capable of capturing solar energy and converting it into energy-rich substances. The tree uses these to build its body and to perform its many functions.
 
In our economies, we struggle with the problem of disposing of
waste products. But in trees this is dealt with neatly and efficiently by this fixation of solar energy. The by-product of this process is oxygen, which is essential for animal (and plant) life. It is released from the tree’s leaves to the atmosphere via the same access pores (stomata) through which the key raw material, the carbon dioxide, is taken in.
 
The crown of the tree is so designed as to give the leaves maximum exposure to the source of energy, the sun. Every photosynthesizing cell in the leaves is connected to the rest of the tree by minute conducting channels. One set, xylem, conducts water and dissolved chemicals upwards from the roots to the leaves. The other set, phloem, conducts the sugars produced in the leaves downwards to the roots. Both types are formed within the tree from the sugars generated from sunlight, reconstituted into strong and stable substances called cellulose and lignin. 
 
The root system of a tree likewise has a dual function. It anchors the tree into the soil and extracts water and nutrients from it. When it rains, some of the water directly enters through the leaf surfaces, but most ends up in the ground. A tree needs to obtain large amounts of water to survive and flourish. Its roots actively search for and extract it, along with dissolved nutrients, from the soil for despatch to the crown. 
What is clear from all this is the superiority of the divine design. " 
CMI