Defying Gravity

Defying Gravity

Have you ever seen something so unusual that it stops you in your tracks?  It happened to me yesterday.  I walked out my back door and saw a leaf inexplicably hovering about 6 feet off the ground in the middle of my yard.  That’s right... a floating leaf… dancing in the wind… like one of those levitating ping-pong ball experiments in a middle-school science fair.

We all know that leaf levitation is not a normal, natural occurrence. Gravity is a fairly inescapable force unless you’re commuting in the space shuttle or filled with helium.  But could this flying leaf have just been a fluke?  A random, unexplainable exception in nature?

Of course there was a logical explanation.  After a quick inspection, I found that the leaf was actually attached to a tree in my neighbor’s yard -- nearly 75 feet away.  It was being held aloft like a kite by a single strand of virtually invisible spider-web thread.  The length of the span allowed the leaf to randomly tumble in the steady breeze without appearing to be tethered.

To go a little deeper, the leaf was held by an extraordinary material – a thread only one-tenth the thickness of a human hair, but up to 5x stronger than steel by weight.  This strand was produced by a tiny but extremely complex mobile manufacturing facility:  a common spider.

Now all this could easily morph into a lengthy dissertation about the miraculous wonders in nature.  So, long story short -- something as simple as a floating leaf in my yard required a logical explanation, the creation of a complex material, and a capable and intelligent source.

Now compare that miniature scenario with the incredible feat of engineering that allows the sun to hover in perfect balance in our solar system, and all the gravitational forces at work to create the precise orbits and rotations of the planets, etc.  We could go further, but you get the picture.

Skeptics of the Bible love to tell Christians it’s foolish to believe in an all-powerful Creator.  But they ignore the “levitating leaves” all around them.  They accept the illogical without investigating.  They put their faith in flukes.  They believe random exceptions in nature are responsible for life and all the extreme intricacies of the world we live in.

Can we think of ways to share some common logic with unbelievers?  It’s not hard to find an example.  Just look out your back door.

Psalm19:1 (NLT) -- The heavens proclaim the glory of God.  The skies display his craftsmanship. 

- Ron Reid