Recently, all of Manila was agog over a first-time ever one billion pesos Lotto jackpot. Many who haven’t played Lotto before did so for the first time. There ws an air of pregnant expectancy in the air for several days till two bettors finally got the correct combination. Oddsmaker calculated the odds of doing that was one in over forty millions. In practical terms, one’s adds of getting the right combination and winning the Lotto are almost non-existent. Hmmm.
The earth is but one of a billion possibilities and yet it exists. I am also just one of a million possibilities and yet here I am. I have won something bigger than the Lotto because I am alive. This tremendous gift of a living space that the earth is and the gift of life that I am enjoying is totally unmerited. I can only respond with a deep and humble gratitude.
The final book of Stephen Hawking (Brief Answers To Big Questions) was published recently. One of the questions that he tried to answer was, “Does God exist?” And his flat answer is No! “I think the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing, according to the laws of science,” he postulated.
The biblical story of creation says as much with one important difference. The world was created out of nothing, not spontaneously but by a Creator. By postulating that the universe just happened spontaneously, Hawking violates one of the most basic of scientific principles – that of causality; or, one of the most axiomatic of human awareness – that nothing comes from nothing.
Musing further on about the wonder of creation, ahat if, in creating the universe (or the universes), God forgot to put in the salt? How bland life on earth would be! What if, in the final days of creation, he misplaced the sugar and left it elsewhere? We would never experience how sweet life could be! Nothing can look more spontaneous than the wild explosion of flowers during springtime in the meadows. Yet, even that spontaneity can be traced back to some underlying cause or reasons.
It is not difficult to appreciate that everything we could possibly need is right here at home on planet earth. There is a grand design that we need to see without our usual blinders. The Creator has filled our world with all things good and yet we would deny his existence by hankering for more. He has created enough good things for everyone and yet we dare deny his grand design when only a few have so much and the many others hardly have any. When I take a serious look at our world and truly appreciate nature I can only conclude that it was love that made all of this beauty, goodness and bounty happen.
I am no genius like Stephen Hawking and I greatly admire him for the intellectual giant that he is. Yet, might it be possible that a man of simple faith has a better understanding of the world around us than Hawking does?