Consider the apple …

Where, who, what is God? Not the man up there or Michelangelo’s huge gray being leaning out of the clouds, or the enthroned king—one ringed about with angels. Forget the anthropomorphisms. Pick up an apple. Bite into it. Reaching the core, you’ll notice little brown seeds. Put one in your hand and reflect on it. What is in it? If you cut it open, just whitish stuff like the apple surrounds. Think deeper; yes, it is a blueprint of a form of life. A different life beyond understanding.

An apple seed is planted or falls from the tree. Perhaps one in 100 finds a way into the earth to be covered by leaves and snow, dormant until an inner clock tells it it is spring and miracles begin. No matter its orientation in earth, it knows up and down. Somehow, shoots head up and little roots go down, begin to radiate as anchors for the future tree.

Above the soil, it reaches upward, nourished by the osmosis of water and minerals from the roots. More miracles to go. Little branches reach out, soon to bud leaves to catch sunlight and clothe itself in protective material to become bark. And in maturity buds will produce fruit to complete the cycle of its blueprint.

With the seed in your hand, look at a tree. Did man create this? Much misused word “create” means to produce something out of nothing. It is not in man’s intelligence to make life. There is a great intelligence far beyond conceivable, omnipotent and omnipresent God. Mankind has its own blueprint but with an additional spark of the intelligence. The ability to choose good or bad (conscience) is the soul.

DEREK MUMFORD

Little Rock