I know it’s my fault, but when I see a picture book about God’s creation in a book subtitled: Encountering the Glory of God in the beauty of the universe I have expectations of a book devoted to showing what God did in his creation. To a certain extent that is indeed in this book. In fact, I begrudgingly have to say that the book did what it promised. But it could have been so much more.

For example, one of the best nuggets I found in the books where the sun is described as a virtually unique star in that it is so massively dense and stable. This is truly one of the major indications that God designed the universe to support our planet. But there is nothing about the fact that this window of life on earth is very brief and focused. There is no hint of creationism, the billions of years myth is simply assumed. It is fairly easy to show that the sun cannot be older than thousands of years, maybe millions, but certainly not billions.

In short,  there are some beautiful pictures of God’s creation but it’s a poetic look. When the scripture is quoted about God placing the stars with His breath, I was hoping for so much more. Probably the best quote from the book is this:

THE UNIVERSE BEGINS TO LOOK MORE LIKE A GREAT THOUGHT THAN LIKE A GREAT MACHINE. —JAMES JEANS, PHYSICIST AND ASTRONOMER

The Big Bang is actually an incredible idea expressed with amazing power. How our God loves to create beauty!