A Word of Encouragement from Elizabeth Handford
My husband Walt was an ardent mountaineer, growing up in Seattle. He and his aged father
even did a 3-day backpack into the Three Sisters, peaks each over 10,000 feet in the Cascade
Mountains. Walt could walk into a dense forest with no trails, and come out on the other side exactly
where he intended to arrive. How? He had a small compass, about an inch in diameter, that he
followed. He used it all his life. It was absolutely dependable, because of the magnetic field God put
in the earth’s core, a magnetic north pole that ends fairly near the north pole, true north.
When I was little I briefly held a compass. I was fascinated, seeing that needle swing back to
the same spot on the dial, no matter which way I turned it. In sixth grade, my math teacher said,
“Tomorrow we’ll use a compass.” At last I was going to get to actually hold a compass! Instead, I
was given a protractor, not at all the compass I thought she’d meant. If someone that day had told me
that years later Walt and I would fly our own airplane to Chicago and Colorado Springs and
Charleston using a magnetic compass to guide us, I’d have been ecstatic.
That magnetic field is an astonishing gift God designed especially for human beings. God had
told Adam and Eve they were to “have dominion over all the earth” (Genesis 1:26) But how could
mankind explore all this immense world and know where he was? The magnetic compass enables
sailors and pilots (and migrating birds and fish and animals) to travel to their destinations, in spite of
darkness or clouds. Even your GPS gets information from satellites positioned by magnetic north!
God designed this beautiful earth, and He built into it innumerable evidences of His glory and
power. Psalm 19:1-4 (nkjv) says:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament shows His handiwork.
Day unto day utters speech,
And night unto night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech nor language
Where their voice is not heard.
Their line has gone out through all the earth,
And their words to the end of the world.
I’ve been reading “Physics and Astronomy,” a book of articles taken from the New York Times.
The last chapters concern the beginnings of the universe. It seems so odd to read supposedly smart
scientists grope for a way to keep from admitting that God created the universe. They agree the world
is amazingly complex and intricately designed to protect human beings on earth, in our protected
corner of the universe, but they can’t—or won’t—acknowledge that an awesome, powerful, wise
Creator must have made it.
Stephen Hawking wrote “The Grand Design,” about the marvelous design of the universe that
protects humanity on earth, but he denies a Designer; it all just happened by serendipity.
Richard Dawkins wrote “The Blind Watchmaker.” He admitted that the universe is as
exquisitely designed as a fine Swiss watch, but huffily asserted there was no “watchmaker” to craft it.
Physicists Richard Goth and Li-Xin Li opined, “The laws of physics may allow the universe to
be its own mother”! Oh? Really?
There is an awesome Designer. He is a seeing Watchmaker. And the “laws of physics” have
never “allowed that something can come from nothing.” God, the infinite Creator, is the loving God
who deeply cares for the people He made. He has made provision in this universe, in a million
different ways, for our joy and eternal welfare. Why is it so hard for anyone to understand this, when
the whole Creation shouts it is His handiwork? Perhaps because they do not want to submit to the God
who created them. But Psalm 53:1 (NKJV) explains it:
The fool has said in his heart,
“There is no God.”