Imagine a factory somewhere in China churning out electronic gadgets (iPhones, iPads, iPods) by the millions, then shipping out these goods throughout the world to eagerly waiting customers. The gadgets are all perfect – manufactured according to strict specifications and then checked for conformity using even stricter quality standards. Every now and then, a unit malfunctions or a customer is not happy with the color or the screen. Another unit, exactly the same, is shipped out as a replacement. All the millions of the gadgets bearing the same product number are all the same and interchangeable.
Now, imagine somewhere in the universe where millions or stars are churned out everyday – all burning with the same intense energy and yet no two stars are quite the same. Imagine in yet another corner of the universe where millions of stars are exploding in their final death throes after having burned themselves out after some millions years. In the process, these stars eject and scatter throughout the universe cosmic debris. And out of this stardust comes asteroids, comets and planets. Imagine in some planets some particles coalescing into living cells and these living cells eventually evolving into beings with consciousness as persons. I wonder if all this ‘manufacturing’ is done according to some ‘manufacturing specifications’. I wonder if the ‘manufactured goods’ are meant for consumers eagerly waiting somewhere to buy them up. Or, is all of this just some fortuitous happening? A chance and happy confluence of quite unrelated events?
Do I see things as just simple being there? Or do I see purpose and meaning in all of this? For some people, the jump from the randomness of life to its being purpose-driven is a simple and easy one. For others, this leap pf faith is just simple too much or too fearful to take. I know my body is made of stardust, remnant of some stars exploding in the past. But I am also aware of a consciousness that cannot be explained by stardust alone. I have a mind that can generate thoughts. And I can hold these thoughts apart from myself. I can think good thoughts and say “I want to be good”. I can think bad thoughts and say “I don’t want to be bad.” I can feel different emotions, sometimes quite independently of my body. In the process, I get the sense that I am unique and one of a kind in all of the complexity around me. I get the sense of a Presence that is always there, deep within me, around me and sustaining me.
In prayerful silence and with deep gratitude, I thank this Presence for revealing himself to me in Christ – that he and his Christ are one.
The Jews took up stones again to stone him. Jesus replied, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?” The Jews answered, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God.”. . . . If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”
John 10: 31-42