Council Community Church

Pastor's Corner

THE LONG AND THE LONG OF IT

My boys and I have a running joke. Whenever we see an obvious display of God’s beauty, power, design or sense of humor in the world around us, we nudge each other and say: “It sure was lucky that this thing developed by pure chance over billions of years!” “It sure was lucky that over bazillions of years the salmon developed the ability to alter its entire metabolism from freshwater-friendly to saltwater-friendly and back again, and then to be able to find its way back upstream to its original birthplace (sometimes hundreds of miles) to spawn!” Yup; sure was lucky.

Consider the giraffe. A mature bull giraffe is about 18 feet tall (the tallest on record was George, at the Chester Zoo in England. He was 20 feet tall). As you know, much of that height is in his neck. Because of the pressure required to pump blood all the way up that thin neck to the brain, the giraffe needs a tremendously powerful heart, and his heart can be as much as 2 _ feet long (yours is roughly the size of your fist!). Sure is lucky that he has that huge heart!

There’s a little potential problem, though, every time he goes to take a drink. When the giraffe lowers his head that big heart is no longer working against gravity, it’s working WITH it, and so the mighty heart pump will literally blow the giraffe’s brains out as he is trying to get his drink. What a bummer! Animals with blown-up brains don’t last long, so there go all the giraffes.

But wait! The arteries up the neck are equipped with a series of check-valves that close as the giraffe lowers his head, shutting down the blood flow to the brain. Sure is lucky he has that! Even at that, the pressure remaining after the last check-valve is still enough to burst the small vessels in the brain. Poor giraffe!

But wait! At the base of the brain is spongy tissue which absorbs that last rush of blood so that the brain is safe. Sure is lucky he developed that! But another problem arises - so to speak – when the giraffe lifts his head back up from his drink. Now the blood all rushes AWAY from the brain, causing the giraffe to pass out cold and collapse. Now he is easily eaten by any passing predator, and the African plains are loaded with those. Eaten animals can’t propagate their species, so there go all the giraffes again. Rats!

But wait! The veins going down the neck also have a series of check-valves which close down the blood flow away from the brain. Then that spongy tissue at the base of the brain squeezes the absorbed blood into the brain as the system is equalizing again, so the giraffe is up and running (literally) without skipping a beat (literally). Sure is lucky he has those features, huh?

The real point here is that any one of these features – by itself – is actually detrimental to the giraffe’s survival. Together, however, they form a perfectly designed system that allows giraffes to thrive and survive. But they would have to be in place simultaneously, functioning together, or the giraffe could never have survived. A slow, gradual process could never allow giraffes to make it, because ALL of the parts must be working together FROM THE START, or the animal is dead.

Statisticians have clearly shown that the complexity of life could NEVER arise by pure chance/evolutionary processes. How much greater the impossibility of giant-sized hearts, artery check-valves, spongy brain base, and vein check-valves all having spontaneously (and simultaneously) developed by luck!

That’s not lucky, that’s miraculous. But a miracle demands a Miracle-Worker. Do you know Him? Do you belong to Him? He calls out to us through His Creation. He instructs us through the Bible. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open to Him. After all, you don’t want to leave your eternity to chance! See ya next week.