Knowing the God Who Wants to Be Known

Ministry Associate Calvin Chu preaches from Romans 1:19-23. Discussion points: God intentionally put his fingerprint everywhere in creation so that we could know him, God wants to be known by us, we are often too willing to trade the glory of God for the lesser pleasures of this world.

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  Preacher: Hello, everybody. It's good seeing you all. Let actually I'm, I'm just gonna read it kind of as I walk through it then. Well, that might be simpler. So I, I want us to go back, way back, back in time to a simpler time. It was a time when the ice bucket challenge had just reached its peak. You remember that ice bucket challenge in about a year from now, Leonardo Dicaprio will have finally won his first Oscar three months after that, a gorilla named Harambe will have been killed in the Cincinnati Zoo. This and this is a way long time before fidget spinners. You guys remember fidget spinners, you'd see like a kid and you just, you see them and like I worked with youth back in the day and so I would just see them all the time. So this was, this was before then when fidgets spinners were sort of like the social currency in the schoolyard the year 2015.

  And just like all these memories and memes that I've just listed. We're about to experience an international viral moment. My friends, I present to you I remind you of the dress. The month is February a week before her daughter's wedding. Cecilia Bleasdale sends a picture of a dress, that she's going to be wearing to that wedding to her daughter. And after disagreeing on the perceived color of said dress, she posted on her Facebook, right? She asked her friends settle this debate between me and my mom. What color is this dress? And this debate spreads all over the small island community of Colin say where the bride and the majority of our friends are located. It's really, really small, you know, it's like you would post on social media. Hey, friends, close friends. What do you think about this? Right?

  And so, on the day of the wedding, Kaitlyn McNeil, which is one of the bride's friends and a member of the band who played at the wedding. She posted a photo of the dress on her Tumblr. Remember where Tumblr was really a big thing and asking the people a little bit of a wider community to resolve the debate between her and her friends. And still, there's no conclusive result. And so, at this point, so she sends a message to, to Buzzfeed. So like, hey buzzfeed, like, what do you guys think? Do you, can you resolve this for us? What color is this dress? And so at this point, her Tumblr had gotten about 5000 notes, like almost like likes basically, and basically in the notes, in the comments, people are screaming about like how they're right and the other side is wrong, right? I don't if you guys remember this, the dress was white and gold or black and blue, right? That was kind of the debate and, and people all over the world seem to be disagreeing about this, at least of the world that had seen this Tumblr account.

  So then Kate Holderness who was a blogger at buzzfeed, she actually asked her coworkers about the picture and, and, and it's about 5050 between her coworkers. Half of them thinks it's white and gold. The other half thinks it's black and blue. So she posted on Buzzfeed and it's like a, it's like a little thing. She was like, whatever because if you know buzzfeed, they're like constantly putting content out anything that's viral from any social media, they're just putting it out there and it's sort of like spray and pray. Hopefully something goes viral. Someone will click it, someone will like it, someone will go to the page and, and, and that, that's what they're trying to do. So she puts it out on buzzfeed and basically now link retweets, linking the photo go into the hundreds of thousands instantly. And ultimately, within the 1st 24 hours, there were 4.4 million tweets about this whole, remember when Twitter was Twitter and not X, that's again, a different time. And so newspapers wrote about it. Academic studies were conducted about it.

  Why? Because it blew our minds that all these people were looking at the same exact thing yet coming to completely different conclusions. And if this small insignificant picture of a bride's mom's dress can send the world ablaze and into this huge debate, my friends. Is it surprising that the people from all walks of life can look at the world, look at all of creation and do the same exact thing. Is it not expected that we look at the world and the work of God's hands and see totally different things.

  Today's passage is going to discuss exactly this concept where in Romans 1:19-23 where Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome. And he's talking about this divide amongst humans, those who see God in creation and those who do not. So I'm gonna read it for us and then we'll pray Romans 119 to 23. It says this for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse for, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became feudal in their thinking. And their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds and animals and creeping things.

  Let's pray. Father God, I know one of the beautiful things about being in New England is we get to experience all the seasons. We get to see so much change from, from the, the hot days, or rainy days of the summer all the way to the cold, dreary days of the winter and everything else in between. And God. The thing that's amazing about that is if we can see how diverse and how amazing your world is. But God, we know that there are some who yes, they see it, they see you. But there are those who do not. And God, I pray that as we reflect on this reality, that our perception of what you have done in creation will change how we see ourselves. And most importantly change how we see you and your love for us and God. So I pray that your Holy Spirit would move in us as we look at your word further today and pray all this in Jesus name. Amen.

  OK. So, Paul is incredibly clear here in verses 19 and 20 that the existence of God can be clearly seen when you look at creation. Paul is essentially writing that when you look out in the world, when you step out here and you look, it's a dreary day. It's rainy, and, and it's, it's, everything is soaking wet and it's, it's, ah, but when you look out at creation, even at its quote unquote worst, you can still see that God is out there. And, so part of every human heart and mind is stitched with the capacity and maybe even the inclination to recognize the existence of God again, verses the 19 twenties for what can be known about God as plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. So theologians call this general revelation revealing to all people at all times and all places that God exists.

  And I think most people can sense this feeling like if you've ever been to the Grand Canyon, I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I would love to go. I hear great things, you know, just five star ratings a lot. So definitely wanna go check that out. When you go and you see it and you're like, wow, this is like when you're at the, at the top of it again. So I've been told at the top of it and you look and you go, whoa, this is crazy or Aurora borealis again. I I missed it like we could see it a few, like, like a month or so ago and I missed it on the one day that we could see it. I saw pictures on Facebook and I was like, whoa, I really missed it. But I, when I hear when you see the northern lights, people just are stuck in awe and being in nature that has that much magnificence. It's, it just sort of stops us. Right.

  Maybe you've never been there before. Maybe you never felt this. But, maybe you have an experience as you're like going at the top of a hike. It doesn't have to be like mount Everest level hike or climb. But you're at the top of this little dinky hiking hill and you, you're out there and you all of a sudden you go and you say, oh, it's Boston. Whoa. Like you could see all the, look at all the trees. Like there's something about when we're in nature, we just sort of experience this difference in ourselves. You know, maybe it's when we are on the beach and you're, maybe you're not at the beach because they don't want to go to the beach. Maybe you're just going for a walk after you got a lobster, roll on the north shore or something. And there's something about seeing the ocean waves crashing against the rocks and you go, wow, there's so much more to the world than I realize.

  And I feel like there's something about the vastness of space or the depths of the ocean that makes us reflect. We think about the decisions that we've made in life. We think about the future we project and we wonder about ourselves, we wonder about our family. We wonder about where we're going. We're wondering what, what, what's going to happen and we have children. We go, well, what's life going to be like for them?

  And what Paul tells us is that that's not by accident. God wants us to reflect on him when we look out to the world that he has made. God deliberately leaves his fingerprints and left his fingerprints all over all of creation so that we could know Him right there. There is majesty, there is magnificence out there because that says, wow, that's bigger than anything I could ever do. There must be something more or more more specifically, there must be someone more namely God.

  Here, here's an illustration for you guys. Have you ever put a tempered glass screen protector on your phone before I have one? I like them. I will, I love and I hate them at the same time. I love them because I'm, it supposedly protects my phone from like damage. Like if I drop it or whatever, it protects it. But the reason I don't love it is because almost without fail, I will get like a fingerprint on it. You know what I'm saying? Like, so, so if you've never put one on, but it's basically like a sticker that's made of glass in the adhesive side. And, and when you get AAA timber glass protector, it's, they're very particular. It's like, make sure you get the wet wipe and you clean your screen first and then once that's done, you can take the dry wipe and you wipe it away and then when you're done with that, you take the, the there's these little dust stickers. So you make sure you go over your whole screen and you get all the dust off and you make sure you're very careful because once it's on there, it's on there and be whatever imperfections are on, there will be there.

  And so for me, just for whatever reason, I'm not great at it. And, and I've had many screen protectors where I've put my fingerprint on it and then I, I not, not realizing I'd done, I put it on and I go and so when I take it out and I see my fingerprint, I go. And so every single time I look at my phone, there's clear evidence of my failure and I can't even deny. It's me because it's literally my fingerprint. It's literally me like police could come like, yeah, no, you, you're, you're responsible, you're guilty. You are the perpetrator here. And I just like, oh, it's, it's like, it's kind of like, like literally there's like spec on my phone, it's not a fingerprint this time. But there's spec and I go, oh jeez. And it's clearly me, it's clearly my failure.

  But imagine if I wanted to be forever memorialized on the backside of my screen protector, I would be putting my fingerprints all over that screen protector and I'd put it in a wave, it proudly. Like Calvin, your, your phone is so blurry. Like what's happening. Yeah, those are my fingerprints because I did that. And so I think if, if, if we want, if I wanted everyone who looked at my phone to think that I'm the one who put the screen protector on and then that's what I would do.

  And that's what God wants because God's fingerprint all over Christian is not a mistake. It's on purpose, it's deliberate. He does it specifically so that you can know I did that. And so when you look at the Grand Canyon, when you look at the northern lights, when you climb to the top of the mountain, and you see God's majesty, he wants you to feel that way. He says yes, exactly. I want you to see that. I did that and I did that so that you could know me so that your heart and your mind would be drawn to the creator as you look at creation.

  And this is exactly what God does in creation. He leaves his fingerprints all over it, not just so that we can know that there is a creator or know Him as creator, but know that He wants us to know Him personally verse 1920 again for what can be known. But God is playing to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes to name his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. God wants you to know Him, friends, the creator of the cosmos left calling cards all over creation. So you could see that He is there. It's not an accident, it's on purpose.

  But in a room of this, many people or people may be watching this online at some point in the future, we might be thinking that's, that's ok. Like I, I don't really believe in God or believe God is out there and I don't know exactly where you are and the questions and doubts that you may have. But I want you to think for a minute that if God is indeed real, I want you to understand this, that He cares enough about you to leave signs to you that He is real and he is there and he wants you to know Him. His fingerprints are left on this world so that we can see Him, that we might all be able to think about Him and think about us going to Him for all those who follow him. He wants us to reflect on the reality that He is good enough to show us that he's real. He loves us enough to, to scatter breadcrumbs so that we could follow it to him. And for that grand reunion.

  And so for some of us that's like enough because you're like, maybe you're like struggling in your faith and you're just like, I don't really know if God is there. I don't really know if God loves me. And for some of you, you know, that's it. You can just shut your brain off and just reflect on that reality that God loves you enough that he used creation. He used the majesty that we see in nature to draw us to him. And that's just, that's where we need to go. That that's it more. If you don't believe in Him, you get invited by a friend here today or you're watching online because you, you know, you, you clicked on something and this is a suggested video or something like that. If you don't know Him, then that might be all you need is just to reflect on that. God loves us enough and God is knowable. He loves us enough to make himself knowable and God wants to be known by us. And so, yeah, if that's all you need to mull over, that's great.

  But some of you are probably thinking that's, that's good. Ok. Yeah, like I know, I, I know that God is real. I believe in Him. I believe in Jesus. Prayed, the prayer baptized, served before and, and, but do you think if that's true that God wants to be known by us, then how come everyone doesn't know Him? If he leaves fingerprints and bread crumbs and glimpses of himself in all of creation? How come every single person in the world doesn't believe Him? Why don't all people believe in the existence of God?

  Actually, the passage talks about this in the verses 21 and 22 would say for although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to him, but they became feudal in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools again. Paul reminds us further that creation shows that there is a God that there was something built into all of us to see the fingerprints of God all over creation.

  Verse 21 tells us that the natural thing to do would be to honor or to praise God or to give thanks to him. And that's what we're supposed to do when we look at creation. But instead of doing that, we become feudal in the, in our thinking. And a better translation is for that verb is directed our thoughts towards worthless or empty or purposeless things. What does this tell us? I love this verb here because it tells us that the choice is between recognizing God and idolatry.

  But idolatry doesn't always equate worshiping another God adultery is to give glory and significance and wait to something that doesn't deserve it. It can be using a big chunk of your time to finding the best deal online. It can be putting a lot of our self worth and how we look, it can be spending a large amount of our money on our car or a computer. But to glorify God is to give him due honor, which means to attribute Him proper value in our lives.

  So if we're spending the majority of our lives, not on Him, not centered on Him, not focused on Him, whatever we are pursuing more than Him is worthless and thus unworthy of us giving that value to. So we were created to see the fingerprints of God in creation and recognize and honor and glorify the creator. But instead we pursue lesser worthless things with the full weight of ourselves. And the result is that our hearts become darkened and the word heart here. And many of the ancient thinkers, they see it as the organ of spiritual or moral perception in the center of their motivation, the spiritual life's driving force, essentially. What pause is that in pursuing anything above God, pursuing anything other than God with the full weight of ourselves, our heart or spiritual driving force, which is programmed to see and pursue God becomes transformed and deformed, losing that ability. And as a result, we lose the ability to be motivated towards and motivated by him.

  I remember when I was in seminary, one of my roommates was engaged to be married that summer of our, my first year there and one of my hallmates, one of our good friends of ours who was talking to that roommate, about wedding preparation. and he said to him, he's like, oh, buddy, you got to get your honeymoon abs, I never heard this phrase before. I, maybe she was like, what are honeymoon abs? And that's literally what my friends like, what are honeymoon abs? He's like, you know, honeymoon abs and he verbatim. He goes, you know, honeymoon abs went. But as in like a basically six pack abs or I guess if you're very ambitious eight pack abs, he's like, you need to look good for your wedding pictures. And for your wedding night that this was the type of guy that he was seminary are just full of funny, funny characters. I liked him. He was a good guy. He was funny, but he was just, he was just like that.

  And so basically the, the thoughts that you need to fit in your tailored suit and that, you know, that you look good for your, your, your big day and, and basically he says you need to get ready, you need to get in shape. And so many a groom have set out to achieve this goal of losing a few pounds to, to be able to fit into their suit. We fit into their suit well, on their wedding day, but I will say that I've seen many a groom who have had this ambition and achieve this ambition and then get married. And after the wedding they begin to pursue lesser things. They, they, begin to snack while they game late at night again. they begin to have another drink with dinner because why, why not? Right. They begin to have another sorry, they, they be, they stopped working out, they stop eating light. All of a sudden, salads aren't really on the menu anymore and the weight that they're so motivated to lose before the wedding comes back.

  Now, I'm not trying to body shame. Anyone at all as someone that struggled with body image and wait for, for a good chunk of my life. I I, that's not my goal. I have learned that all that we are all loved by God, regardless of, you know, our shape and our size and our weight. What's most important is that we should be of good general health. And if we're living healthy and stewarding our bodies, well then great, that's, that should be the end goal. So my goal is not to say, if you don't look a certain way, you're less valuable, not at all. But what I am trying to say is that many grooms put in work to direct their lives towards a goal. And after they achieve that goal, they begin to shift and slowly pursue other things and lose that motivation altogether.

  And this is like the pursuit of God. For a lot of us, I could say that much of the world at large pursues that pursues things that dull our ability to see God. And I'm sure someone somewhere has made this passage of proof text that says the world is evil. This is, this is the, the the world is bad. And thus Christians should avoid the world. But the context of this is actually Paul is writing to the Roman Christians. He's already the church in Rome. And so really, when verse 21 even verse 21 it says, although they knew God. And so really, this is a passage directed at those who say they follow Jesus. And so when that sort of push comes, it says that, hey, look, you might lose the motivation, you may become darkened in your understanding, you become demotivated by God. He's talking to the followers of Jesus.

  And so we've been wired to see God in creation and the moments that we have of a, they, we can recognize them for a time for a season. But over time, we begin to pursue lesser things and eventually we release the motivation to pursue him altogether. And it's very often in the name of good things. It's very often in the, you know, I really can't focus on God right now. I I I'm focusing on my, on my relationship with my partner. And once that, that settles, then, then I can focus on God or, you know, I'm really, I'm really focusing on my kids right now. And so I can't really devote my energy to my relationship with God. Once, once that's good, then, then I will go over. I'm really trying to get to VP level. I'm really trying to get this promotion. I'm really trying to, to focus on, on, on, you know, I wanna be salt and light in the company and I can do so much better if I'm in a higher position. So I'll work on my relationship with Jesus once that's going and by putting these lesser things at the center of who we are and our motivation, it begins to now demotivate our pursuit of God.

  And in the same way that I've talked about these grooms who were once motivated and I find different motivations. They're not as motivated for the one thing I've also seen a lot of Christian brothers and sisters who they were once so on fire about their relationship with God. And they really wanted to be like, I wanna pursue Jesus with everything that I am. And then all of a sudden it begins to slowly fade. So verse 21 tells us. So verse 21 and 22 tells us that for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became feudal in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise, they became fools.

  Ultimately, the path from honoring God is not one dramatic decision from pursuing God to pursuing another God. It's a slow creep towards worthless things and the dulling of the motivation to pursue him and then the full pursuit of those lesser things. And one thing I really like about this word, the word that shows up in verse 23 and also 25 which I haven't read. But I will read for you. Here is this word exchanged and, and, and so let me read verse 23 and, and exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals creeping things, verse 25, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen.

  This word exchanged in both of those verses has a sense of exchange in terms of a transaction like a trade trading one thing for another. And so in pursuing worthless things, we actually give up the glory of and truth about the immortal creator God for images of the creation. What this tells us is that in our pursuit of lesser things, in our pursuit of idols, there is not a net zero on our lives. It's not me taking something or not taking something. It's actually we are taking something that we have something of worth this ability to see God to be motivated God be driven by God. We're taking that and we're trading it for a lesser thing. And when we pursue these lesser things, we actually lose this trade.

  And so it's a little early, but fall is coming and fall means a lot of things to a lot of people in New England people think, oh, the leaves are just so amazing. We're gonna go leaf peeping. We're gonna drive up to Vermont. It's gonna be amazing. I never heard this term. I grew up in New England. So I don't, I've never heard leaf peeping until I had people from outside of the air. They go, you wanna go leaf peeping? I'm like, what is that? I don't know what that is anyway, this is a total aside, not related. So that, that, that's fall for some people for a lot of people who are like in, in school, they're thinking fall is like, OK, I get ready to just ramp up my studies again or, or maybe people are starting school for the first time.

  But for a good chunk of America, fall means fantasy football. I feel like I may have struck a chord with some people that fantasy football is a big reason if you're unaware of what fantasy football is. It is this pretend game where individuals choose to start a league where people become owners of a football team where they choose real NFL players to be part of that said team. And every week they face off against another team and their collective performance in real life games are quantified and total by, and the owner with the larger sum wins the game. And they do this for weeks throughout the NFL season. I used to play fantasy football in college and when I started, I kind of got pretty into it.

  I didn't grow up knowing a lot about football. Ironically, I, I played football in high school but I didn't know a lot. I certainly didn't know, like, what was a good player or no, who was a good player, like, who should I draft? Who should I not draft? but I decided to play anyway because I thought, you know, it would be a great way to connect with friends. It would be a good time. Like, you know, it'll be fun. It'll be, it'll make watching football a little bit more exciting because I could just think about this player that I don't really care about and all they get me points and then that makes me potentially win. And so, ok, that's really, really exciting, I guess.

  Anyway, I had this one friend who was really, really into fantasy football and, like, we're like, probably, like, halfway through the season. Yeah, I think we're about halfway through the season and he, he, like, I'm in college. So he, he, he, we're hanging out in the dorm and he starts, like, cussing me out and he's like, like, you're ruining the game. Like you were not doing this, right? Like you, I can't believe you're blah, blah, blah. He's like, he's, he's, he's kind of, you know, tearing in to me a little bit and I'm just like, oh, ok, dude, like, sorry, like, I don't know why. And so the reason he's so upset is because all season long he's been sending me trades. He's like, you should trade this person for this person or these people for these people.

  And because like, I don't really know football players to that degree, like I don't want to make a bad trade. I don't want to be like, oh this is a good trade and then like be on the losing side of it, you know, like I don't, I don't want to be the, like, choose giving my best player for like scrap because I don't, I just don't know it that well. Right. So, so the whole time I'm rejecting every single trade and he's getting so upset, he yells at me. and so, so that was actually the last season that I ever played fantasy football because I said, wow, you guys are doing it way too seriously. It's not that serious for me.

  So, and no judgment if you, if you, well, I mean, if you feel judgment that's might be the Holy Spirit but that's not me. so, but so what's funny to me is that we can have this like level of seriousness with pretend football teams. Like I have friends that I gotta read all the articles but no, who's the best? Who I gotta draft? Who I'm gonna gonna reject? Send me a trade. Ok. What, what does this trade analyzer say? What does this trade analyzer say? Hm, let me think about it. And then we, we have this such seriousness about trading, pretend football player or real football players on a printed football team. We're so willing to be careful with that.

  But when in the trade between the glory of the creator for small parts of creation, between truth of God, for lies between worship and serving God and serving anything else we for the most part mindlessly take that trade without even thinking about it and we take that loss consistently. Oh yeah, trading us. Yeah, no problem except oh yeah, that trade, yeah accept, make that trade, accept. Oh but it's this quarterback for, for this, these two running backs. I don't know. Let me think about it. Let me show some discernment here. Let me pray to the football gods on ESPN or pro football. Talk to see what they say before I be. Do something too brash.

  We trade, honoring God for honoring our status, our wealth, our image, our success and we call it a good trade. It would be dumb to not do that. Right. It would, it would be smart to be doing it that way, putting God in the backseat first because God can handle it. But I this is the one opportunity for me to be successful. This is the one opportunity for me to, to, to find this, this partner. This is the one opportunity for me to be able to gain that status as if God were handcuffed and couldn't find another time or another situation. That's like trading seedy lamb for four kickers. Yes, I was like trading honeymoon ads for heart disease. That's like trading a gem mint slab first edition Shadows Char Zard for chewed up grass energy cart. Ok. That one, I wasn't sure if that was gonna land. I now know that did not. That's fine. That's cool. It's really cold.

  And so this is what a darkened heart thinks is a good exchange. And here's the thing, there's nothing we can do to break free from that darkened heart. We can try as hard as we want. We, we can try to muscle it, we can try to pick up ourselves up by our bootstraps, but there's nothing that we can do to be freed from that. And so basically the self driven motivation to pursue God with a darkened heart is so corrupted that we could not reverse course on our own.

  But this is why Jesus came. Jesus came so that he could take care of our darkened heart. He could bring light to where there is darkness and a light that could bring the only light that can overcome this darkness to bring life where there was only death. I don't know what you're saying with God today. And I don't know if you know, may, maybe you've never sat in church or watched a church service before. Maybe you grew up in the church. Either way. I think the truth is this, that God loves us enough to leave his fingerprints all over creation. Just tell to scream out to you says that I am here. I am real and I want you to know me and because we still could not see it. He sent his one and only son to die to remove the darkness of sin. So you could see him so you could so we could win back that exchange, that he could win that exchange for us that we lost in the trade at the beginning.

  And if you don't know this, then, then I hope you know that, that He is still pursuing you. He still wants you to follow him. Now, if you're hearing this, know that this is a sign that God is out there and He wants you to know this truth that He loves you enough to do these things for you. But if you see yourself as a follower of Jesus, then I, I think we have to check our hearts. Are you pursuing anything worthless? Are you following after anything other than God with the full weight of our being? Are we putting anything over God when we look out of creation? Do we see God crying out and reminding us of His love for us? Because it is and he wants us to be driven and motivated by him.

  And so yes, you say you follow Jesus. That is good. That is great. If you check it off on a census, you say you are a Christian. Amazing. I'm happy. That's great. But then what about the rest of your life outside of that survey? Do the other parts of your life show that you are checking that you are a follower of Jesus and the the the best place to say, what is the motivator of my life? Where is my heart driven towards? What's the motivating force going towards in my life?

  The dress was blue and black. By the way, I don't know if you knew that I saw, I saw white and gold. and you can't convince me, I mean, I know they've done like the photo editing and all the stuff they show in the real picture in different light. But from that picture, it looks like white and gold. But it doesn't matter, actually, doesn't matter what I see because there is objective truth. The creator of the dress said, no, I made it blue and black using blue and black materials. And so, regardless of what I see, my perception is wrong, right? There is the right way to see it, which is the blue and black dress, that's it.

  And so I the same is true with creation. Others may see it differently. But God wants us to see that creation says that there is a loving God, a powerful God who leaves his fingerprints all over creation so that we could know Him, so we could see Him so we could recognize him. And so that is the right way to see creation, regardless of what other people see it as regardless of what your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, they might not see creation and think of God and be drawn to him. And that's OK that, that we could pray for them. We hope that they see it.

  And if you're here, I don't see it, I hope and I pray for you. But the objective truth is that what is out there in nature has been made plain to see for all of us since the beginning of creation that there is a creator who loves us and died for us so that we could follow him. And so let us pray as we reflect on that.

  Father God, I just thank you that we have the world that there is beauty out there. And there are experiences in nature that we cannot explain, except that they were made by an incredible, beautiful, loving, powerful God who didn't just do it to, to kind of flex and show how great I am, but to show how great I am and he wanted us to follow him. And so God, you are the hymn and so God, we thank you that you've given us to us, that it is made clear. And so for God, for those of us who are pursuing lesser things, would you help us to turn from them and turn to you? I pray this in Jesus's name, Amen.