The above is part of Acts 17:26 where the apostle Paul is attempting to introduce the true and living God to the Athenians on Mars Hill. I have often wondered what all the idea of determining the boundaries of man’s habitation entailed.

Our present technology seems to have taken us a long way. That is not to say that we have ‘arrived’ anywhere in particular. After all, someone could have said the same thing after the introduction of metal tools.

We do have, however, some pretty amazing stuff available to the average citizen these days. We have little electronic devices smaller than a deck of cards, that hold hundreds of songs and even videos making them available at the touch of a button. Cars zip around smoothly and comfortably and in such close proximity to one another on our intricate system of highways that it would dazzle the minds of those living only a century ago. My little hand-held gps (short for global positioning system) is in contact with satellites orbiting the earth so it can tell me exactly where I am, mark a spot I may want to return to and show me the path I took to get there. We speak to people across the world using nothing other than a little phone we hold in our hands and carry in our pockets. Wow! Yep, we’ve come a long way, baby!

And yet, there is this simple little plant on my desk. This ‘simple’ plant, however, is so far beyond our meager technological ability that it still boggles the mind of biologists all over the world. How does it collect sunshine and turn it into food? How does it produce seed to propagate its species? How does it use carbon dioxide for its own benefit and in the process produce oxygen for mine? If you cut a stem from this particular variety of flora and put the cut stem in water, it will develop roots in a few days that will allow you to plant it and have another plant just like the first. Now that’s technology!

What am I driving at? Well, just that we haven’t really come that far. We don’t even know what the life force is that keeps this little plant going. We cannot create either the plant or the life within it. We cannot duplicate or synthesize any of it. And even when life has been in someone or something like this little plant for years, we cannot bring it back once it is gone… and we can’t tell anyone where it ‘goes’.

Don’t be alarmed. This is exactly how God planned things and that is why it has always been this way. He made the universe and gave it to us, telling us to ‘have dominion’ (Genesis 1:26-28), and so for millennia mankind has manipulated the resources of the earth to serve its needs. But that is as far as we can go on our own. God has indeed set the boundaries of our habitation. As the song says, ‘He holds the germ of life within His hand‘.

And so for life, and all things relevant to life, His desire is that we come to Him. He alone is the designer, creator and sustainer of life. He has provided it to us and instructed us in it all along the path of history and we still have trouble getting it right. Is this because His teachings are too complicated to understand or too difficult to carry out? No. Listen to what the prophet, Micah said:

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to
do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

There, so simply summed up, and so easily employed, is God’s ‘secret’ to life.

Marty Kessler