I have been thinking this week about two stories of how we arrived in the world. The first theory is evolution, which says that we are just a product of random chemical reactions over a very long period of time. The second story is that of creation as described in the very first chapter of Genesis.

This is not the place to say whether one of these stories is factually correct, or whether we can blend the two together in some way. I do want to consider some of the ramifications of these stories and the results of believing one or the other.

As we read the familiar words of Genesis 1, we discover that God is greater than the world, the sun and moon, the stars and bigger than everything all put together. Science tells us that the universe is unimaginably huge and more complex than we can imagine, but God is bigger than all of this.

At each stage of the process, God describes the creation as good, until the last day when He makes the first people and He describes it as “very good.” It is as if everything is made for the purpose of supporting human beings.

The Bible teaches that we are created for a purpose and that we are the pinnacle of God’s creative activity.

On the other hand, evolution tells us that everything is random, from the birth of our planet (an insignificant lump of rock on the edge of an average galaxy), to the production of individual human beings (you are just a random arrangement of DNA, and it determines your life).

So we get to a place of despair because there is no reason for us to exist. There is no future because in the end the whole universe will just run out of energy.

From that depressing explanation of life, we reap a harvest of depression, purposelessness, sexual anarchy and lawlessness.

God made you for a purpose. He has a plan for your life and a destiny for you in eternity.

Praise God!