For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9

Of Heaven and Hardware Stores

            In the beginning there was one trip to the hardware store. . . and then another, and another, and so on until, now there have been so many trips to Menard's, Lowe's, and Neumyer's that my husband has lost count.  For several months now, he's been working on upgrading our very old garage into a more modern (think insulated and lighted) space that will better serve his need for a workshop.  Our family joke is that if you haven't made at least three trips to the hardware store, it isn't a real project.  Well, this is a real project, and then some!

            In the beginning. . . .

 The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born. (Psalm 33:6. NLT)

 For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.  (Romans 1:20, NLT)

In the beginning, God said, and over and over again, our universe, world and every living and non-living thing, including every law of nature governing them all was spoken into existence. Amazing!  I'm sure my husband has wished, at least a time or two, that he, too, could speak his projects into completion! 

            We aren't God, so speaking universes, or even workshops, into existence isn't something we can do, but because we're made in the image of God, we have been given the extraordinary ability to make the visible from the invisible.

            That ability is faith.

            Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1

 . . . Abraham believed in the God who brings the dead back to life and who creates new things out of nothing. Romans 4:17b

             Our faith is made visible through our actions.  Recently, a group of Christ-loving men in our area got together on a Saturday morning and built a handicap ramp for a woman who was being sent home from the hospital in a wheel chair after a bad car accident.  When we're acting in faith, it may still require a trip or two or three to the hardware store.  Through our actions, brought about by faith, we make the invisible, eternal Christ and the Kingdom of Heaven visible to an unseeing world.  Isn't it amazing that God, so far beyond us in nature, has given us an ability so like His own?  

Daye Phillippo

October 2014