Awe

In a remarkable fusion of art and science, researchers have unveiled Anauchen picasso, a newly discovered microsnail species from Southeast Asia, named in honor of the iconic artist Pablo Picasso. This tiny creature, measuring less than 5 millimeters, boasts a uniquely angular shell that evokes the geometric forms of Cubist art. The team described it as resembling "a cubist interpretation of other snails with 'normal' shell shapes."

This species is one of 46 newly documented microsnails found in Southeast Asia. One researcher wrote, “Although the shell sizes of these snails are less than 5 mm, they are real beauties! Their shells exhibit extraordinary complexity.”

The complexity is not merely aesthetic. The snail has an aperture lined with tooth-like barriers, likely serving as defense against predators. Even more unusually, some of the snails carry their shells with the opening turned either upward or downward—creating an “upside-down” orientation. These details, including the shape and orientation of the final shell whorl, were key to distinguishing between species.

Some of the species were found in recent fieldwork, while others had been overlooked in museum archives for decades, collected all the way in the 1980s. Tragically, many of the snail habitats may no longer exist due to widespread deforestation and limestone quarrying in the region—two major threats to these endemic creatures.

The naming of Anauchen picasso not only pays tribute to artistic innovation but also underscores the intricate beauty and diversity found in nature's smallest creations. This discovery highlights the intersection of art, science, and conservation, reminding us that even the tiniest organisms can inspire awe and appreciation.

Potential Preaching Angles:

When we pay close attention to God’s creation, we can rediscover wonder and joy. God is the master artist, and continually displays His glory through the details of His creation.

Blogger Stephanie Duncan Smith describes the awe she felt watching a total solar eclipse:

[My husband] Zach and I hiked up to a ridge with our supernova glasses. I won’t forget the way the sun just … dimmed, snuffed out, the way the birds swooped in confusion thinking it was nightfall, the magic of witnessing this cosmic event together.

Though not everyone felt that way. I am paraphrasing from memory, but a high-profile CEO tweeted at the time that while everyone else might be staring at the sky through their cereal boxes that day, she would be in the office making millions.

Imagine being bored by the thought of beholding something bigger than yourself, something wild and other and alive. Imagine considering yourself “above” the cosmic orbit in which you make your creaturely home. This executive considered herself too busy to be bothered by the wonder of a world outside herself. She was opting for the security of the measurable, the predictable, all that can be calculated and forecast and scaled. Yet by doing so, she was opting out of the sheer gift of being wowed.

It is human nature to want to be wowed. Environmentalist Paul Hawken once said, “Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course … We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.”

Every night! There is a cosmic event. Every night, an invitation to participate in what psychologists refer to as the experience of “perceived vastness,” or awe. As Hawken highlights here, we tend to tune out the familiar.

Astronomers have found the brightest known object in the universe—a glowing core of a galaxy, called a quasar, located 12 billion light-years away. Quasars are the brightest objects in the cosmos, each consisting of a supermassive black hole that’s actively devouring an orbiting disc of gas and dust. But the black hole in this record-setting quasar is gobbling up more than a sun’s-worth of mass every day, making it the fastest growing black hole scientists have ever seen.

The gargantuan object stretches about seven light-years across, and it puts our sun’s luminosity to shame—the quasar shines more than 500 trillion times brighter than the star in our solar system.

Christian Wolf, lead author of the new study, said, “This quasar is the most violent place that we know in the universe. It is a surprise that it has remained unknown until today, when we already know about a million less impressive quasars. It has literally been staring us in the face until now.”

The black hole in the quasar is ravenous, consuming an amount of material equivalent to as much as 413 suns each year, and its black hole weighs about the same as 17 billion suns.

Wolf said, “It looks like a gigantic and magnetic storm cell with temperatures of 10,000 degrees Celsius, lightning everywhere and winds blowing so fast they would go around Earth in a second. He told reports that he doesn’t think anything will ever top this record for the universe’s brightest object.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This newly identified object is 500 trillion times brighter than our sun! How can anything be that bright? Thinking about this star gives us a sense of what the glorious presence of God is like, for Scripture says that God is a being who "lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see."

Every person starts as one fertilized egg, which by adulthood has turned into roughly 37 trillion cells. But those cells have a formidable challenge. These cells must copy 3.2 billion base pairs of DNA perfectly, about once every 24 hours. To speed up the process, cells start replication in multiple spots with people having tens of thousands of them throughout their genomes.

However, this poses its own challenge: How to know where to start and how to time everything. Without precision control, some DNA might get copied twice, causing cellular pandemonium. Bad things can happen if replication doesn’t start correctly. For DNA to be copied, the DNA double helix must open up, and the resulting single strands are vulnerable to breakage or the process can get stuck.

It takes a tightly coordinated dance involving dozens of proteins for the DNA-copying machinery to start replication at the right point in the cell’s life cycle. Keeping tight reins on the kickoff of DNA replication is particularly important to avoid that pandemonium.

Today, researchers are making steps toward a full understanding of the molecular checks and balances that have evolved in order to ensure that each origin initiates DNA copying once and only once, to produce precisely one complete new genome.

Possible Preaching Angle:

3,000 years ago, King David exclaimed, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (Ps. 139:14). Scientific knowledge has increased exponentially since that time and we should be even more in awe of God’s creative genius on display.

It is impossible to do justice to the wonder of the creation of the world and everything in it. You and I have to work hard to make anything. Even when you buy a piece of furniture from IKEA, with all the pieces properly designed and a booklet of instructions, you are driven to the edge of your sanity trying to follow the instructions and assemble what you bought.

All of our DIY projects require mental focus, physical dexterity, and perseverance. We struggle to make things, even though we always start with raw materials, are following instructions, and have collected the appropriate tools. But you and I have never created anything; we do not make something out of nothing. C. S. Lewis said it this way: "Creation, as it is for God, must always remain totally inconceivable to man. We only build. We always have materials to build from.”

The truth of creation should fill us with awe, humble us, and drop us to our knees. God, with nothing more than his will and his word literally spoke the universe into existence. Think of huge galaxies and little ants. Think of the body of an elephant and the translucent creatures that swim in the deep­est trenches of the sea. Think of huge towering trees and microscopic organisms. Think of the technology of the human eye and the intricate design of your hand. Genesis 1 and 2 are meant to put you in your place and insert God in his proper place in your heart and life.

Democritus suggested that all matter in the universe was made up of tiny, indivisible, solid objects. He called these particles "atomos” which is Greek for “uncuttable” or “indivisible.” Later scientists discovered that these atoms could be divided into smaller particles known as the electron, proton, and neutron. Now, more than a century after Ernest Rutherford discovered the proton at the heart of every atom, physicists are still struggling to fully understand it.

High school physics teachers describe protons as featureless balls each with one unit of positive electric charge. College students learn that the ball is actually a bundle of three elementary particles called quarks. But decades of research have revealed a deeper truth, one that’s too bizarre to fully capture with words or images. Most recently, a monumental analysis found that the proton contains traces of particles called charm quarks that are heavier than the proton itself.

Mike Williams, a physicist at MIT, said, “This is the most complicated thing that you could possibly imagine. In fact, you can’t even imagine how complicated it is. (The proton) has been humbling to humans. Every time you think you kind of have a handle on it, it throws you some curveballs.”

Our understanding of the atom has come a long way. While it has taken several thousand years, our knowledge of the fundamental structure of all matter has advanced considerably. And yet, there remain many mysteries that are yet to be resolved. With time and continued efforts, we may finally unlock the last remaining secrets of the atom. Then again, it could very well be that any new discoveries we make will only give rise to more questions and they could be even more confounding than the ones that came before!

Possible Preaching Angle:

Scientists continue to expand our knowledge of the universe and how it operates. Just as the universe is massively complex with uncounted galaxies, so the subatomic world is massively complex. Together they are silent witnesses of the mind of our omniscient and omnipotent Creator who designed it and “in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:17).

Researchers reported recently that it is striking that water is the “least understood material on Earth.” In an article, researchers ask, “What could we not know about water? It’s wet! It’s clear. It comes from rain. It boils. It makes snow and it makes ice! Does our government actually spend taxpayer money to study water? Yes, water is common—in fact, it is the third most common molecule in the universe. But it is also deceptively complex.” From steam to ice, water continues to mystify. Here are several of the weird facts about water:

Why Does Ice Float?

Researchers tried to tease apart what makes water unique among liquids. It’s got anomalous properties, like expanding when cooled below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. (This) explains why lakes freeze downward, from top to bottom, rather than up. Normally frozen solids are denser than their liquid equivalents, which would mean that frozen chunks would fall to the bottom of a lake instead of staying on top. But when water freezes, it creates an open structure, mostly empty space and less dense than … liquid water, which is why water props ice up.

Why Can Insects Walk On It?

Water has an uncanny level of surface tension, allowing beings light enough, like insects, to walk or stand atop it. Since it’s these distinctive features among others that power our climate and ecosystems, water can appear to be “fine-tuned” for life according to the researchers.

How Does Water Evaporate?

The rate of evaporation of liquid water is one of the principal uncertainties in modern climate modeling. ... The addition of salts to water raises the surface tension … and so should reduce the evaporation rate. But experimental studies show little or no effect when salts are added. The exact mechanism for how water evaporates isn’t completely understood.

Possible Preaching Angle:

These researchers point out some of the weird anomalies of water, which covers 71% of the surface of our world. Although they do not acknowledge God in their research, they do admit that “water can appear to be ‘fine-tuned’ for life.” Christians would respond that without its God-given properties, lakes would freeze from the bottom up, killing all fish in them. And, although the salt in oceans should inhibit evaporation, the water in the oceans evaporates, producing rain over the land. These are some examples of “Intelligent Design” in which our wise creator fine-tuned the earth to sustain life and provide for our needs and enjoyment of life.

Philip Yancey wrote in a blog on the seemingly infinite expanse of space and the smallness of our earth by comparison. The sheer scale is enough to make you dizzy, but Yancey stares at the sky and recalls the Book of Job—and Jesus. He writes:

Scientists now believe that if you had unlimited vision, you could hold a sewing needle at arm’s length toward the night sky and see 10,000 galaxies in the eye of the needle. Move it an inch to the left and you’d find 10,000 more. Same to the right, or no matter where else you moved it. There are approximately a trillion galaxies out there, each encompassing an average of 100 to 200 billion stars.

Job got a closeup lesson on how puny we humans are compared to the God of the universe, and it silenced all his doubts and complaints. I’ve never experienced anything like the travails Job endured. But whenever I have my own doubts, I try to remember that perspective — the Hubble telescope view of God.

In his letter to the Philippians, the apostle Paul quotes what many believe to be a hymn from the early church. In a … lyrical paragraph, Paul marvels that Jesus gave up all the glory of heaven to take on the form of a man — and not just a man, but a servant — one who voluntarily subjected himself to an ignominious death on a cross. (Phil 2:6-7)

I pause and wonder at the mystery of Incarnation. In an act of humility beyond comprehension, the God of a trillion galaxies chose to “con-descend” — to descend to be with — the benighted humans on this one rebellious planet, out of billions in the universe. I falter at analogies, but it is akin to a human becoming an ant, perhaps, or an amoeba, or even a bacterium. Yet according to Paul, that act of condescension proved to be a rescue mission that led to the healing of something broken in the universe. […]

We hear the roar of God at the end of the Book of Job, a voice that evokes awe and wonder more than intimacy and love. Yet Philippians 2 gives a different slant on the Hubble telescope view of God. A God beyond the limits of space and time has a boundless capacity of love for his creations, no matter how small or rebellious they might be.

Once, when a little girl asked Albert Einstein if scientists pray, Einstein replied in part, “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifested in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to that a man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

Then in an interview before his 50th birthday, Einstein was asked if he believed in God. Einstein said,

I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must’ve written those books. He does not know how. He does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.

Scientists studying two different parts of God’s awesome creation—the oceans below and the sky above—have made two startling discoveries.

First, (in January 2022), an underwater mapping project off the coast of Tahiti took an unexpected twist. Deep sea explorers discovered a sprawling, two-mile long coral reef resembling a bed of roses. The remarkably well-preserved and pristine reef is the largest ever found at its depth. One scientist called it a “dream.”

Then, two months later (March 2022), astronomers working with the Hubble Space Telescope photographed a record-setting image showing the most distant individual star ever seen. The star lies 12.9 billion light-years from Earth. It is believed to be about 50 times as massive as the sun and millions of times brighter. The scientists expressed awe and surprise at their own discovery. Individual stars far from Earth are often too dim to be seen even with powerful telescopes. But Hubble was able to spot the massive star with help from “gravitational lensing,” in which light-bending gravity from massive celestial objects functions as a magnifying lens. The star was dubbed Earendel, which NASA said means “morning star” in Old English.

In his book With, author Skye Jethani describes the mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Italy:

Fifteen hundred years ago, the emperor of Rome built a tomb for his beloved sister. The small building was designed in the shape of a cross with a vaulted ceiling covered with mosaics of swirling stars in an indigo sky. The focal point of the mosaic ceiling was a depiction of Jesus the Good Shepherd surrounded by sheep in an emerald paradise.

The mausoleum of Galla Placidia still stands in Ravenna, Italy, and has been called “the earliest and best preserved of all mosaic monuments” and one of the “most artistically perfect.” But visitors who have admired its mosaics in travel books will be disappointed when they enter the mausoleum. The structure has only tiny windows, and what light does enter is usually blocked by a mass of tourists. The “most artistically perfect” mosaic monument, the inspiring vision of the Good Shepherd in a starry paradise, is hidden behind a veil of darkness.

But the impatient who leave the chapel will miss a stunning unveiling. With no advance notice, spotlights near the ceiling are turned on when a tourist finally manages to drop a coin into the small metal box along the wall. The lights illuminate the iridescent tiles of the mosaic but only for a few seconds. One visitor described the experience: “The lights come on. For a brief moment, the briefest of moments—the eye doesn’t have time to take it all in, the eye casts about—the dull, hot darkness overhead becomes a starry sky, a dark-blue cupola with huge, shimmering stars that seem startlingly close. ‘Ahhhhh!’ comes the sound from below, and then the light goes out, and again there’s darkness, darker even than before.”

The bright burst of illumination is repeated over and over again, divided by darkness of unpredictable length. Each time the lights come on, the visitors are given another glimpse of the world behind the shadows, and their eyes capture another element previously unseen—deer drinking from springs, Jesus gently reaching out to his sheep that look lovingly at their Shepherd. After seeing the mosaic, one visitor wrote: “I have never seen anything so sublime in my life! Makes you want to cry!”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is difficult to experience the glory of God in our daily lives and when we do, it is only for brief moments. Yet, there are time when God breaks through the darkness of this world and reveals himself for a brief moment. Like Isaiah’s experience (Isa. 6:1-5), these moments should be life changing.

Jennifer Stellar, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has an ingenious plan to conduct "spring cleaning for your mind." She says,

We share a universal problem right now. We’re all busy and stressed, and maybe even more self-involved because of the pandemic. Social isolation may be contributing to a tendency to ruminate more or even be narcissistic, which is related to ego. But experiencing awe can “quiet that ego.”

The article concludes:

Researchers define awe as the mostly positive emotion you feel when you’re in the presence of something so vast you can’t immediately understand it. Awe is often found in nature—the experience of watching the sun rise over the ocean on an empty beach or taking a long hike in a dense forest. But it can also be experienced by looking at a cityscape, listening to music or absorbing a piece of art that transports you to a sublime place. It can make you feel small (in a good way), reminding you there’s something bigger out there.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Believers understand that there is Someone behind all this beauty and wonder. We recognize a love so vast that you can't understand it, then an "awe walk" can do even more to declutter your mind and quiet the ego.

Evolutionists like to claim that our Sun is merely an average star, just one among billions. There’s no reason to believe our Sun is unusual … or so they say. After all, if our Sun were special, that might support the idea that a benevolent Creator made it for us! Nevertheless, our Sun is special indeed. Stars come in a variety of sizes, colors, and temperatures. As a single “Class G” star, our Sun is very well suited to support life on Earth. Most other stars are not.

For example, the most common stars (about 75 percent of all stars) are red dwarfs. These stars commonly emit flares: eruptions of superheated material, radiation, and charged particles blasted out into space. Large-enough flares can sterilize any planets orbiting these stars. Although our Sun occasionally releases small flares, they’re gentle compared to what we see elsewhere. We’ve seen other stars produce “superflares” up to 10 million times more energetic than those from our Sun.

Even among Sun-like stars, our Sun is unique. In a study of 83,000 solar-type stars, 148 erupted in just 120 days of observing. Extend this rate out, and each solar-type star would have more than a 50% chance of erupting every 100 years. Over thousands of years, a typical Sun-like star should have multiple massive eruptions. Yet there is no evidence that our Sun has ever emitted a superflare. As the study’s summary noted, “The flares on our Sun are thousands of times punier than those on similar stars.” But why?

Secular astronomers are scratching their heads over this. But creationary astronomers aren’t surprised by this. As Isaiah 45:18 says, the Lord created the heavens and Earth “not in vain … He formed it to be inhabited.” Since our Sun was designed by a masterful Creator to support life, we shouldn’t be surprised that it supports life very well. Our Earth, Sun, and Solar System are fearfully and wonderfully made to be our home--and to proclaim the glory of their Creator.

God looked with delight upon his handiwork at the end of each day of creation having found it good. Part of what it means for us to be created in God's image is to possess a natural appreciation for beauty and the urge to celebrate it and its source.

Anyone who doubts this need only visit the pier at Mallory Square in Key West, Florida around sunset. Tourists from the world over line the railing there each day and watch reverently as the sun sinks silently into the western horizon. In its fading rays a spontaneous response ensues--clapping!

Beholding once this ritual with my own eyes, I couldn't help but wonder. For whom do they think they're clapping?

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) As a Thanksgiving illustration this reveals mankind's universal inclination to give thanks; 2) The incongruity of recognizing the beauty in God's handiwork but denying his existence (Rom. 1).

On September 5, 1977, the Voyager I space probe was launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Titan-Centaur rocket. It has been speeding through space at an average speed of thirty-eight thousand miles per hour ever since, almost a million miles per day. Voyager I is the first spacecraft to travel beyond the he­liopause into interstellar space, and NASA continuously calculates its distance from Earth. As of this writing, Voyager I is 13,490,006,617 miles from Earth and counting.

That is pretty amazing, isn't it? But not as amazing as you. The Voyager 1 will run out of gas, so to speak, around the year 2025. At that point, it will have traveled more than fifteen billion miles! But guess what? That is less than half the length of the DNA strand(s) in your body if (they) were stretched end to end. The cumulative length of DNA in all the cells in your body is about twice the diameter of the solar system (over 32 billion miles)! In the words of the psalmist, you are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Editor’s Note: You can verify that amazing fact here.

When man fell in the Garden of Eden, he took nature down with him. In spite of this some of nature has retained its former glory, and many have seen God’s hand: “How many poets have claimed to observe him in a vermillion sunset or a blooming rose, in a bird’s song or a ripple on the surface of a stream?”

The famous American naturalist John Muir wrote in 1839 hiking in the Sierra Nevada mountains: “Another inspiring morning, nothing better in any world can be conceived. No description of Heaven that I have ever heard or read of seems half so fine.”

In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt visiting Yosemite wrote: “The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry, rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages.”

On the other hand, the fall and savagery of nature is all too apparent, as some observers have written, nature is also “full of danger and malice, chaos and murder, uncertainty and terror … We have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order. ... Masked beneath the beauty of nature’s world is one simple and ugly truth: life must take life in the interest of life itself …”

God’s creative ability truly is more wondrous than anything man can conceive. For example, the spider and its web elicit considerably more astonishment than the man-made intricate world wide web. The 48,000 known species of the spider were given an awe-filled treatment by the magazine New Scientist.

Weighing between 50 and 80 milligrams most spiders know how to plan ahead. They alter the size and structure of their webs according to the remaining silk reserves in their glands, ensuring that they don’t run out midway. They are also sensitive to the weather. In low temperatures, they make simpler structures with bigger gaps between the spirals to avoid spending too much time exposed to the cold.

Spiders are so adept in the manufacture of their webs, that in most cases the prey has no chance. They tweak the tension of silk strands to boost the transmission of vibrations from a struggling insect, allowing the spider to respond more quickly. They can even learn from near misses. If their prey hits the web but then escapes, spiders will lay down more sticky silk to ensure this doesn’t happen in future.

Like humans, spiders have a fondness for travel. Spider silk--the envy of human engineers--is put to a huge range of uses. This includes using it for a sort of flight known as “ballooning,” in which a few threads, lifted by electrostatic forces in the atmosphere, carry them far and wide on nothing more than a light breeze. Spiderlings are known to survive without food while travelling in air currents of jet streams for 25 days or longer.

Science writer Ferris Jabr asks a difficult question about those who do not believe in God as Creator: “How do you explain beauty?” He quotes Charles Darwin, who believed not everything was a result of merciless natural selection: “A great number of male animals, as all our most gorgeous birds, some fishes, reptiles and mammals, and … magnificently colored butterflies have been rendered beautiful for beauty’s sake.”

There is such an overabundance of beauty and creativity in nature that we often don’t even have the tools to observe it. A bumblebee, as just one example, can perceive ultraviolet light. Many flowers absorb or reflect this light, and are a distinct beacon for the pollinating bumblebee. Jabr claims, “There is an entire dimension of floral beauty invisible to us … because we do not have the proper biological hardware to perceive it.”

Jabr concludes his piece by admitting that we can’t properly grasp the elegance, power, and universal truth about beauty. “Beauty is a dialogue between (seeing) and (what is seen). Beauty is … the impulse to recreate water lilies with oil and canvas. It is the need to place roses on a grave.”

Possible Preaching Angle: “Merciless natural selection” does not explain the beauty present in the world. However it is explained when we know our loving and gracious Creator “who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17).

Brett Baddorf, a missionary to the South Pole (yes, he lives and works at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station), has surprisingly discovered God’s incredible beauty in this remote place. Baddorf writes:

My best moments during the winter here … are spent walking outside where isolation and darkness meet. I pause to reflect on God’s vast infiniteness, gazing at a crystal-clear view of the Milky Way and at constellations invisible back home. Stepping outside into 90 degrees below zero Fahrenheit with an average 30-degree wind chill is daunting, but every moment in the wild I feel God’s overwhelming presence as I’m made aware of his transcendence.

I enjoy learning about the sciences that explore the vastness of space. But the more I learn, the more I see the intricate hand of God weaving the tapestry of the sky. One person on the station told me it was absurd amid all of this infinite wonder to believe in a God who would be bothered with such an inconsequential planet, let alone the people on it. Gazing into the unbridled magnificence of our galaxy, however, I felt anything but irrelevant to God. Quite the opposite. I felt God’s tender grasp.

The most unique of my outdoor experiences at the South Pole has been standing beneath the Aurora Australis. Even with a scientific understanding of what causes this phenomenon, it is easy to stand in awe of a Creator who moves beyond simple function and into indescribable beauty—it is entirely possible God is doing both at the same time. Watching as wild green curtains dance above a barren and inhospitable landscape, one cannot help but wonder if God reserves some of the more marvelous masterpieces for the few who strive to the furthest corners of this world.