Reflecting the Glory of God

One thing that Pastor Jon (from my old church in Bremerton, for you Olympians who may read this) always said was that coffee beans reflected the glory of God. It was always kind of funny to watch him revel in it, just thinking about the smell of coffee. But he was also being serious because he would always state that, however good it was, God was so much better. He wasn't so much joyful in how good the coffee smelled, but more how much better God was.

Recently this thought came back to me in a different way: everything reflects the glory of God. I already knew this, of course, but I found a prime example of this that spoke to me and may speak to other audio nuts like me.

I was in class the other day. We were learning basics of how analog recording and playback works. It was when we got to the part about records, you know, the old, giant CDs that were a sign of how giant iPods must have been back in the day. The biggest difference, besides size of course, is how the audio plays. CDs are just digital. The files are uploaded onto it and it can play them back.

But with records, there's a lot more that goes on. I don't remember all the details, but when they make a vinyl record, they basically cut lines into it. These lines vary depending on the audio being put into it. When the needle on a record player (something else no one knows exists) is stuck into the lines, it moves around. This generates a magnetic signal that, basically, reproduces the sound for us to hear. I'm pretty sure the magnetic signal is converted into a voltage of some kind.

What struck me about this was the utter brilliance of how this worked. The fact that an electrical signal can be converted into another electrical signal to generate and reproduce sound is incredible to me. While people were obviously smart for having discovered this, this was there, waiting to be discovered because God created it to work like this in the first place when the right tools and components were assembled! He invented it, He invented how it would work. It just needed to be discovered, which I believe was God's providence as well. That is to say, it reflects His utter genius and brilliant creativity! It's just like that coffee bean; when blended with the right ingredients, it creates this drink that is amazing (to some; I personally dislike coffee, but other people dislike seafood, which I LOVE).

So, the next time you're doing pretty much anything, just think about the fact that whatever you're doing works the way it does because God made it so. Think about its beauty, or the intricacy of the details that go into making it work. God is more beautiful. He is far more brilliant than whoever discovered how this thing works because He invented the way it would work. These things cannot even come close to revealing His full glory, which should thrill us to no end.