Mark 4:26-29
All
growth must start somewhere. Human life begins when egg and sperm come
together. Most plants start with some type of seed. But no matter which
starting point you use, you can always back it up in time. You could say that
the seed starts when pollen from the pistol reaches the stamen. Or you could
say it is when the plant produces the flower, or the second set of leaves grows
after the cotyledon (the first set of leave) has broken out of the seed. Or
when the plant produces the seed, or when the plant buds in the spring
preparing to produce flowers.
Our
description for this difficulty in naming the beginning of the process is call
the cycle of life. Every step is an integral part of the process. You can’t
skip a step and complete the cycle. You can’t rearrange the order. It can’t be
done backward or out of sequence. God designed it to move in one direction in a
particular order.
We
have an individual who starts the process by scattering grain seed in the
field. That is the part that they do. They are responsible to begin this
process. Without this step none of the others will happen. But they must do it.
No one else will.
But
after they have scattered the seed the process is the work of someone else.
Some people want to name this entity responsible “Nature” to keep from
admitting that the LORD is at work, but changing the name doesn’t help the matter.
They want to say that this non-personal, non-entity, non-rational thing guides
and directs. But by their very definition of Nature it can’t do any of the
things they need it to do. Seed needs someone with intelligence behind it to
create the mechanism that causes growth to happen. No accumulation of accidents
can create intelligence. And even if it could, this statistically impossible
event would have had to happen innumerable times to complete even the simplest
life.
Think
of it like this. If I could throw a basketball a mile and happened to get it
through the hoop scoring a point, I would have to be able to drive a hole in
one from the opposite side of the earth, and shoot a rifle from Mars and hit a
quarter, and thread a needle by dropping a thread from the top of the World
Trade Center building. Life involves so many complicated, statistically
impossible events that random chance can’t accomplish the task.
The
person scattering the seed certainly doesn’t know or isn’t aware of the power
behind the various developmental moments of a plant’s growth. And they really
don’t care about the particulars. His job was to scatter the seed.
What
are you supposed to be doing? What parts of life are you not supposed to be
concerned about? Where do your responsibilities end and someone else’s begin?
Rest happens when you know the line and stay behind it.