The Plumbline

Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist at the Hayden Planetarium in New York. You might recognize him from the History Channel's show called "The Universe". He was one of the ones opposing keeping Pluto as a planet and who frequently lectures on the extreme "limitations" of any scientist who believes in "intelligent design". His stand is that to believe there is a God and Creator of the universe is to limit the possibilities of all other 'discoveries'. You can be very well educated in the sense of 'intellectual content' and be very empty when it comes to connection with the God of the Universe! If we truly believe all this beauty and majestic 'inter-working' of all of creation could just occur by a 'big bang' or some 'alignment' of the universe's 'forces', then we are missing out on the most amazing relationship we can have with not just this universe, but with the Creator of it all! We live within ...

If you have ever stopped to consider how your life is going, you might just come to the conclusion of having been living by default rather than by any particular design.  When you buy a new electronic device, there is a "factory preset" for how the system should work.  It is called the "default" operating system.  As time goes on and you become more familiar with what the device can actually do when it gets off the "default" mode, you might actually find you can do some pretty handy things with the device.  "Default" is only a beginning spot - it isn't where we are designed to live.  When we settle for "default", we negate the purpose of being created with the various abilities God has worked into our temperament and character.  In truth, whenever we settle for living in the "default" mode, we are simply saying we are content with someone other than us designing how we should live and respond - kind of like following a sc...