Incomparable Artist

I have stood in the mist of Iguacu Falls in Brazil as gorgeous tropical butterflies, winged bearers of abstract art, landed on my arms to lap up the moisture. I have crouched beside a bay in Alaska as a pod of feeding beluga whales made shiny crescents of silver in unison against the dark green water. I have sat under a baobab tree in Kenya as giraffes loped effortlessly under sunset clouds and a line of half a million wildebeest marched single file across a plain. Above the Arctic Circle, I have watched a herd of musk oxen gather in a circle like Conestoga wagons to protect the mothers and their young (who in wintertime must adjust to a 130 degree drop in temperature at birth). I have also sat in hot classrooms and listened to theology professors drone on about the defining qualities of the deity — omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, etc. Can the One who created this glorious world be reduced to such abstractions? Should we not start with the most obvious fact of existence, that whoever is responsible is a fierce and incomparable artist beside whom all human achievement and creativity dwindle as child’s play? (Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor: How My Faith Survived the Church)