I have a whole group of new friends! They started to come visit my room when the weather grew warm. They're a quiet, industrious, and adventurous like me, so we get along pretty well. They're all about 3 millimeters long with dark brown or black coloring. None of them are very pretty, and to tell you the truth, I can't really tell any of them apart.

      Have you guessed yet? My new friends are ants! It's a secret though. I'm afraid to tell anyone ants are in my room, because they would try to poison them. I see no reason to do that. I'm not being invaded or overwhelmed by them. Only two or three are brave enough to wander away from the window ledge. Otherwise, they cause me no harm, and I let them be. Ants can be inspiring and instructive creatures. I'm grateful for their visits.

Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.

Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. - Proverbs 6:6-8

    I felt kind of bad. When the ants first started to visit, I set a cup on the window ledge and crushed three of them to death. I thought the space was clear, but I hadn't checked thoroughly. I remembering thinking, "Ah! The ant is more diligent, dedicated, and energetic then I will ever be. I accidentally killed three out of disregard for them, even though they have better qualities than me...".

      Ants are pests. They bite. And they ruin picnics and steal food. It's silly to think of ants in this manner.

      Compared to humans, God gave ants only little gifts. And yet, I tend to waste the provision God has given me. The ants waste nothing. I am often lazy, letting many of my abilities degenerate. Or I use my abilities for selfish or evil purposes. Ants work all day long, never complaining, using all their abilities for the survival of their colony.

     Ants have no thought, no emotion, no conscious. They are tiny, weak, and fragile in a giant world. Even though the ants possess little, they wisely and completely use all they possess. Whereas I have been given great and abundant gifts from God, but I am entirely irresponsible with those gifts.

     Perhaps it's not foolish to consider the ant. Maybe, instead of being lesser, ants are in fact greater than I am.

     O Lord,  what is man that You regard him, or the son of man that You think of him? - Psalms 144:3

     We are less than ants when God looks upon us. We are dust. (Gen 2:7) We are a breath. (Psalms 144:4) Despite that, God cares for us very much. God sacrificed His Son to save our souls, we who are only dust and breath. He considers us, as tiny, weak, and fragile as we are. He considers the ants too. I want to be like Him and consider the ants also.

     I'm glad You're not like me, God. You are always full of care and consideration for Your creatures, the great and the small.

     Please help me be more careful where I put my cups from now on. Thank you, Father.

Amen.  

            I am ever befuddled by the way people (myself included) can read through the Bible and completely miss layers, concepts and ideas sitting right there on the surface. So let's come right out and jump into this misconception.

            In Christianity, there is no such thing as blind faith.

            This statement bears repeating: the idea of a "blind faith" does not exist in Christianity. To define it, "blind faith" is being asked to believe in a concept just because -- a concept with no reasons, no support, no evidence, only just because. ("Blind faith", as used in this post, should not be confused with "faith in that which is unseen".) God, being God, gives us a context in which our beliefs are centered. In all honesty, no Christian ever knows it all. Paul described it "looking through a mirror dimly". And that's why its still called faith. We don't see all of it, but we do see. And we see enough to recognize what it is; there are evidences and consequences of it all around and everywhere.

            Almost everyone is familiar with Creation and the book of Genesis. God created the world, animals, planets, humans, the whole shebang in seven days. How can you prove this? Go outside into your backyard and look around. Here on earth, a created object bears something of the creator inside of it. You can't create anything without leaving indelible infusions of your own personality, your own characteristics, your own preferences. You can tell a lot about a painter, a sculptor, or a writer by looking at their works. The more of their paintings, statues, or stories you see, the better idea you have about the creator. The Bible says God created the world. The Bible also gives massive amounts of material about God's personality. Everything God is shows up in nature. Order, beauty, balance, color, richness, power, and efficiency: all are characteristics of God. Even the most barren, harshest lands have their own glory, and the creatures who live there are tough and strong. You're living in a massive, living breathing, existing work of art. Look hard enough and see for yourself what evidences you find.

There is only one glitch in this massive system and that's mankind. Nature can be harsh but nature is not downright evil. Downright evil appears in humans whether it be in needless slaughter, extreme waste, or the horrors that we do to each other. God says the cause of this glitch was the fall of man. Man gained a sinful nature inside of himself. That's the cause, so naturally you should be able to find effects. But first, a deeper look into the cause. What is a sinful nature? Put simply it is a profound, headstrong bent away from God and toward evil. Man, as an overall being, is inherently evil through and through. Evil is the direction man naturally leans towards, and it's from his nature that all wrong are done. Now look around at mankind and tell me what you see. The Bible even gives you a way to see: You can recognize a tree by it's fruit. Look at people. How do they act and what are their motivations? What types of things to they say and why? You can tell by a person's words and actions what their state of being is. Are the things people put out into the world overall good and beneficial or bad and self-serving? Moreover, take a solid look at mankind's endeavors as a whole. This principle can be applied on a big scale. Where are corporations focused? Countries? Governments? Has any of the good accomplished lasted or did it corrupt itself from the inside out? I won't tell you what I see. I want you to look for yourself.

I once read somewhere that the Bible was the most vigorously studied and poked at religious text, not just by believers but mostly by unbelievers trying to disprove it. Among the public mind, one of the biggest charges brought against the Bible is that it's been changed and/or put together by man so how in the world can you trust that's it's still God's words? First, let me answer in Christian perspective. I won't dispute the fact that the Bible could have been put together or adjusted by people over the ages. But God, being God, is perfectly capable of keeping the Bible saying what He wants it to say, regardless of what men try to do to it. I mean, He's God. This is His message. He's got it under control. Next, I will answer from an earthly standpoint. The Bible is HUGE, not in page count, but in depth. The Old Testament and the New Testament are a massive interwoven mesh of symbolism, multiple themes, and concepts that tie together back and forth, despite gaps of hundred of years in some places. Moreover, despite the huge amount of content and layers, the Bible never contradicts itself. They all coincide together to form this incredible picture. The Bible consists of history books. (Even Christian's forget this fact sometimes.) The entire Old Testament and the first four gospels are history books written by the historians who were no more disreputable than other historians of the ages. I've studied religions created by a man, and they don't nearly have the same amount of depth. You can gather all you need in one read over before you hit the bottom. A person would have to coordinate the contents of 66 history books written by 40 men over a span over six thousand years and conjoins two religions; while capturing the tones and inflections of each era of writing, maintaining the symbolism (much of which is inside the lives people lived) the concepts, and the themes; while making the contents applicable for future generations and aligning up real world effects with Biblical explanation of the causes. If you know even the slightest thing about world-building, to successfully do this is impossible. Even for an organization of people over the centuries, it's not humanly possible because somewhere somehow humans would make a mistake. While humans make mistakes in translating the Bible at times, these translations are only on the surface and don't change the deeper idea. Similar to "looking through a mirror dimly": you can put a ding on the surface of a mirror but it won't change the world behind you. You can still turn around and see the world as in it's truth.

The Bible provides a spiritual panorama that reflects the complexity, the over-welling focus, and tiny nuances the real world portrays. In my personal experience with beliefs, religions, and thought matrixes, I have never seen anything of this magnitude. I have never seen anything this uncanny. I have never seen a religion which states "This a cause, and this is the effect"; and then you can go out and actually see the causes of these effects in everyday life. The three topics I have addressed in this post is only a faction of the evidences that exist about God and the truth of the world.

 I didn't become a Christian on blind faith. I didn't become a Christian because someone "talked me into it". I became a Christian because I am seeing something. If I may be so bold, I believe that's why many people turn to Christianity. We are seeing something working behind the scenes of life. We see a purpose working behind the seemingly random coincidences. We see something more in life. And I became a Christian because I looked at the Bible says and I looked at the way the world works and the two matched up. I became a Christian because I was enabled to recognize just what it was that I was looking at in the mirror though it be dim. And someday, the mirror is going to be taken away. What we all see now through the mirror, we will someday confront face to face. Whether I'm right or wrong is beside the point; someday both you and me, dear reader, will see and know the truth.