Life's Ponderous Adventure: Musings of an Old Rancher

By Ed Grover

The author hopes this book will bring to the reader’s attention and focus the value in reflecting on various, often differing perspectives of our world. It seems many people live out their lifetime, rather unthinkingly, without ever considering seriously, any purpose for their life beyond immediate personal pleasures and satisfactions. Then they die, so they seem to think.

A little intuition and insight soon reveals there is much more to our world than what we can see and that each of us has a real purpose for our existence. A basic truth the author points to is that human purpose is unattainable in isolation. Our thoughts, no matter how lofty, are worthless unless they are communicated and shared with others, in love. And so, he says, he writes.

This book brings forth numerous ideas and inventions, discoveries and talents revealed in literary, mathematical, and art forms, all manifestations of God’s handiworks revealed through our humanness. The book also points to the humble efforts, the drudgeries of routines, even the poverty of so many humans and how God values and honors every individual who sincerely lives to please our Creator, God, no matter their station in life.

God’s creativity didn’t end the sixth creation day. Yes, God rested on the seventh day, and He instructed us to do the same. God’s creative time marches forward, never static, but rather dynamic, energetic, ever-changing, evolving with ever-emerging newness and promise. Amazingly, God endorses and promotes our own human creativity with an important caveat. It is difficult to find a place on our earth’s surface not rearranged to suit our human generational whims. In so many situations, we have failed to clean up our messes. God gave we humans dominion over the whole earth. What we’ve collectively failed to understand or live up to is that dominion involves responsibility, conservation, and ownership.

Ever since the reformation and its associated human upheavals, technology has, with continuing acceleration, produced marvelous time-saving, creative accomplishments. That is, for the minority of we humans fortunate enough to access them. But what about the majority, the masses of forgotten humans worldwide, living in deep poverty, often homeless, their own resources confiscated by greedy entrepreneurs? And what about earth’s surface, so deeply wounded and scarred by human mining interests? Sad to say, if the tables were reversed, and the presently forsaken masses of humanity were somehow to become the privileged, it would be no different. We humans are all selfish sinners So who’s responsible? Don’t blame Satan and his demons. All they do is suggest to us mindful humans. Every evil ever manifested could be traced back to human sins. And is there any possible solution to the messes we’ve made? Of course there is, but few find it. The whole creation, life, and humanity, Satan and his demons, the beauties and the sufferings all come into focus in Jesus. It’s all about Jesus and his love for we humans.

The author’s writing style is suggestive of an ascending vortex (cyclone) of information that first focuses on some primary aspects of us and our world, written for the early childhood reader. It then spirals upward to give the reader deeper perspectives on similar topics, now written in format readable by primary students. Continuing to spiral upward, it is now addressed to intermediate level students, utilizing still greater depth of reasoning and language used. Finally, the book looks deeper into advanced studies of some chosen topics.

Bless us all, dear Lord, in our efforts to better know your creation and You.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638148944

Book preview

My First Days

If I could remember my first-borne day,

From my crib, what first did I see?

Mommy and Daddy’s happy faces,

Lovingly looking down at me.

Then, soon, my sister and brother

Talking funny and acting like clowns,

Made me wave my arms and kick with glee

At all their silly sights and sounds.

Mommy held me in her lap, and I could see

A world of things, so bright, so busy,

So many sounds, so much to touch,

I’m so excited, makes me dizzy.

What’s this on my tray?

Some of it rolls, or squishes,

And some is runny,

Some sticks to my spoon.

And some go splat!

That’s funny!

I love my bath

And my yellow rubber ducky.

Splashing makes me blink my eyes.

In Mommy’s warm and snuggly towel,

I’m so glad that I’m alive.

After my bottle,

Is a good time to nap.

The very best place I’ve found,

Is not in my crib

As you might think,

But right here in Mommy’s lap.

The world about is so busy,

So much to do and see,

I watch sister and brother

Bring back my toys,

I’m learning to throw with glee.

What’s that? Daddy is home!

He sits on the floor and we play.

Then, when he rocks me and holds me tight

I know I’m where I want to stay.

When the day is done, after story time and prayers,

Then off to bed we all go,

It makes me glad this is my home,

And my family loves me so.

I’m Kinda New, but See What I Can Do!

The sun is shining, a new day’s beginning,

I wake up from a good night’s sleep,

I’m eager to know what will happen today,

So I stretch my arms and breathe real deep.

I wash my hands and brush my teeth

And then I put on my clothes,

I look in the mirror and what do I see?

This is all me, from head to toes.

I can run, I can jump,

I can tumble like a ball.

I can swing, I can climb,

And that’s not all.

I can build towers,

Play with dollies or trucks,

If Mommy says the words,

I can read books.

When we go to the park to take a long walk,

I play with her puppy, while Mommy and her friend talk.

The swings and slides

Are always fun,

But sometimes

I just like to run.

When evening comes and everyone’s home,

When we all have time together;

That’s the best time of all, when we share

Love that will last forever.

There’s no better place

To feel happy and safe

When off to bed I go,

Dreams I might have of fanciful things,

Tomorrow promises more, I know.

Early Discoveries

I’m discovering a busy, wonderful world,

So much awaits for me.

Cities, farms, mountains, and trees,

Lakes, rivers, and oceans to see.

I’m learning some things are lifeless,

Like rocks, sand, wind, even the sun.

But, like my puppy, frisky and warm,

Are so many living things that grow and run.

Better than all that, my Mommy and Daddy,

Brother, Sister, and now me,

Live together in our own home—

We all make one happy family.

Then there’s Grandma and Grandpa,

Some call them Nana and Papa—or such,

Cousins, aunts, uncles, and special friends,

They are all loved very much.

It’s so good to be part of a great big family,

All so sharing, fun, and kind,

But best of all, this certain family,

Just happens to be all mine!

What Does It Mean, Alive?

A roly poly! Mommy called it a pill bug.

With many legs, I saw it crawl.

But when I touched it,

It quickly rolled into a ball.

It just lay there. So I laid it on a rock.

Would it ever again move?

Did it go to sleep?

Is it live or not, how can I prove?

I went back to see my roly poly. It was gone!

Did someone take it? Did it just blow away?

Did it unroll and walk away?

What happened to it? Who can say?

I help Mommy plant seeds in her garden.

The seeds are small and round.

Like my roly poly, they just lay there.

Are seeds alive? What mysteries I have found.

Mommy says we must have patience.

She says, To wait without fussing is what that means.

Every day, Mommy and I looked at her garden.

Are our seeds alive? They just lay there, it seems.

On the fifth morning, guess what?

There were tiny green shoots, all down the rows.

Mommy dug one seed up, just to show me,

Each shoot was coming from a seed. How? Only God knows.

God made many things that are alive, Mommy said.

"If they move around on their own, is one way we know,

And all living things grow, like this seed, the roly poly, and YOU.

You will learn much more about ‘being alive,’ when to school you go."

As Daddy and I took a walk,

I told him I helped Mommy plant garden seeds.

She said, "I know these seeds are alive

Because they will sprout and grow—if we help God provide their needs."

Daddy agreed. Then he said,

"Watch the seeds from that maple tree.

Each one has a wing. Like a helicopter.

So in the wind, it flies far away, as you can see."

As we walked, Daddy picked a fuzzy ball,

Growing from a little plant by the path nearby.

Look! as he blew on the ball, fuzzy things floated away.

Look closer. Each seed has its own parachute. Watch them fly!

Then Daddy said, Let’s sit on this log a bit.

And think why these discoveries might be so.

Plants have roots and can’t move around like you.

But God still wants all plants, in many places, to grow.

The wind carries the seeds of maple trees and dandelions,

Other plants depend on furry animals and birds.

While insects and mice scatter still other plant’s seeds.

A way to spread the seeds of all plants, God always affords.

We told Mommy about our walk,

And about how God thinks of every creature’s needs

She said, "When we go to the grocery store

I can show you more of God’s caring deeds."

We talked about the hulls of beans and peas

About the seeds in the fruits of apples and pears,

And about pecans and walnuts, and their very hard shells,

Special places for all seeds, because God cares.

She told me, "When squirrels hide nuts for the winter,

And foxes take apples to their dens,

They too are spreading God’s seeds.

They may not know why, but on them, God also depends."

On the way home, Mommy said to me,

"Remember Adam and Eve?

When they left the garden of Eden,

About God’s wishes, what He wanted them to believe?"

God said to them, "Now, my firstborn,

Have children and when they are grown,

Encourage them to make new homes everywhere.

It’s my plan. I want you, the whole Earth to adorn."

What Is Perspective?

Daddy took me to a very tall building.

Up the elevator we went, up to the very top.

When I looked out the window to the ground, way below,

Things down there looked so different—I was shocked.

The cars and people walking

Seemed so very small.

And, what happened to the other buildings?

All I could see was roofs—no walls.

On a different day, as I lay on the grass near a big, big tree,

I tried pretending I were an ant. Mr. Ant, how do you see the tree?

As I lay there dreaming of the ant’s view, I saw a hawk sailing above.

What must my tree look like to you, big bird? Could you tell me?

As I looked in a mirror to comb my hair, I noticed

Whichever way I moved my hand, in the mirror it moved the other way.

All these strange ways of seeing things, Mommy explained to me,

Depends on how we choose our point of view. Which way is best, who can say?

While playing on my swing, I twisted it all up.

When I picked up my feet, the whole world whirled ’round and ’round.

That’s another way of seeing things, like riding a merry-go-round.

But it makes me dizzy! Maybe that’s not the best way to see the world, I found.

My playmate said, Oh no. It’s fun being dizzy.

Look at me after I spin in the swing and try to run.

You look so silly. I laughed. How are you going to walk home?

Seeing the world, just being me, is always a good way to have fun.

Chapter 2

Primary Studies—Looking Closer

What’s Real?

Think about your point of view or perspective. Look at the figure below:

Diagram 1

Above, you see two line-segments, one in the horizontal dimension, meaning, as is the landscape horizon, or back and forth.

The other line segment in the vertical dimension, meaning up and down.

What you see is a two-dimensional figure, drawn on this two-dimensional paper surface. The angle between the two line-segments is ninety degrees, often called a right angle.

Could you draw a third line segment that would be in a third dimension, being at ninety degrees, or at a right angle to both line segments already drawn? ___ (Yes/No)

If you can, do it on the above figure. If you say no, explain why you can’t.

(You can find the correct answer to the problem at the end of this article.)

Scientists and mathematicians say our world is three-dimensional. What do they mean? Go to the next page and let’s think more about three dimensions.

Compare the two figures below:

Diagram 2

Both are shaded dark on what could be seen as the outside. The box on the left might appear to spill its contents while the box on the right would appear tipped so as to hold its contents inside.

Now, look at the figure below. Can you, in your mind’s eye, choose to see this figure below as like one of the above shaded boxes, only transparent? And then, can you mentally change your mind’s eye to see this box below as like the other of the two top boxes?

Diagram 3

You can, if you try, see any of the three boxes as tipping one way or the other—as you wish—from two different points of view or two different perspectives.

You can choose, in your mind’s eye whichever way you want to see the box.

Try it. In your mind’s eye, make it flip-flop.

To tell the truth, the line segments used to draw the three box figures are all drawn identically. All are drawn on the same two-dimensional paper surface.

Then, how is it, in our mind’s eye, we think we see three-dimensional boxes?

The answer: We live in a three-dimensional world and are accustomed to seeing all things three-dimensionally. We often call these dimensions, length, width, and height—sometimes substituting in the word depth, for one of them. In the case of the above figures, our mind just assumes the figures are three-dimensional until we consciously think about it.

Now, ponder the following, written poetically:

When you wake up each morning,

In your mind’s eye

You can choose to see your coming day

As something to endure

Or—

You can see your coming day as an adventure!

Adventures can be exciting.

Adventures can be challenging.

Adventures can be risky, even dangerous.

Would you rather just endure the coming day?

Or—

Are you up to looking for adventure?

Anticipating excitement?

Accepting challenges?

Risking possible danger?

You have the God-given power to choose

Because, what your coming day holds for you

Just depends—

On what you choose;

The vision in your mind’s eye.

Get your Bible and start reading in Job chapter 38. This is God, talking to Job, but it is also God, talking to you.

Answer to question on first page of this article. You cannot draw the third line as was ask because it would necessarily go in and out of the paper at the point where the two existing lines intersect. Sometimes, in our efforts, we decide to draw a third line segment intersecting the two existing line segments, at a forty-five-degree angle. We know this is not correct, but in our mind’s eye, we can visualize it as going in and out of the paper.

Our Amazing World—Amazing God

Words cannot begin to describe all the wonders of our world. We humans can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell so many things. The beauty, and awesomeness, and fun. And thrills, and perils, and our visions, our emotions, our questions overwhelm us.

Some—let’s call them entities—we all think we know about,

Mankind’s best thinkers, scientists, and philosophers

Are not able to define or fully describe,

Entities we know are real,

But are not made of atoms.

A few of these words we use for our ideas or entities not made of atoms are listed below. We all think we know what they each mean until we try to write a definition of one of them. You try writing your own definitions—if you want to:

Time is

Energy is

Life is

Beauty is

What I want you to understand is that we all have ideas about our world that are difficult to explain with words, but we just know somehow, what they mean. Think about this, with me.

All things in our world, like rocks and trees, water and air, houses and people, are substances made of extremely tiny particles our scientists call atoms. Yet none of the above four words names a substance made of atoms. So then, what can they be? In our minds, we have ideas of entities present in our world that are very real, but that are not made of atoms.

According to scientists, all things in this world, lands, seas, all the stuff on and in the lands and seas, even the air and all living things, are made of atoms.

There are only about one hundred different kinds of atoms in the universe. Yet uncountable numbers of these extremely tiny atoms make up every thing there is in our universe, including our Earth, sun, moon, all the stars, and YOU.

God created this variety of atoms and used them like we use Legos to build fun models, or letters of the alphabet to make words and books. God uses His atoms to create all of the stuff of this world: rocks, water, dirt, atmosphere, plants, animals, our bodies—every thing.

Note: In another chapter of this book, we will think more about what atoms are and how they make things. For right now, we need to focus on the above list of words which are not about things made of atoms.

All scientists and philosophers agree, none of the words listed above are about anything made of atoms. So if the above list of words aren’t about things made of atoms, what are they about? Good question! I hope you were asking such questions in your own mind before I ask you. If you did, you’re a good thinker. Could you even draw a picture of what any of those four words is about?

Scientists and philosophers say these words describe concepts. Concepts are about human ideas we may hold in our minds. Sometimes people use fancy words like supernatural or extrasensory or mystic or transcendent in trying to explain the source of such ideas. Some scientists like to say such ideas come from dimensions we aren’t physically aware of.

God, who wrote our Bible, says these words describe spiritual ideas of our spiritual minds. God says in His Bible, He brings such spiritual ideas to us from His heavenly realms and puts these ideas in our minds. He tells us His heavenly realms are spiritual realms. Perhaps these spiritual realms are the same as the other dimensions besides the three dimensions of space we know about and scientists talk about?

One scientist, struggling to define time, said that time is what keeps everything from happening at the same time. But his language teacher would have scolded him for using the word time in defining time—wouldn’t she?

Since we all feel like we know what each of the above words in the list means, without needing more words to define them, I won’t try to either, at least, right now. In my book, we are going to take a closer look at each of these spiritual ideas. For now, I want us to focus on just one of them—LIFE.

Suppose you are outside and come across an object that you think might be alive. How do you decide? Probably you find a stick and poke it, right? You use the stick because you don’t want to get too close. It might bite or sting, if it is alive. But why poke it? You want to see if it will react to your poking. You know many living things react when disturbed. How did you know that? Perhaps you reply, I just know from experience. Experience is a good teacher, but sometimes a tough and even hurtful teacher.

Let’s think some more. Is it breathing? All animals breathe, but we usually can’t see the breathing of insects or worms, which are also animals.

Is it warm? I’d be careful trying to find out.

What about plants? Plants are alive, even though they don’t react or breathe in the same way most animals do. How do we know plants are alive? They grow. That’s true, and animals grow too. But we have to be very patient to see growth happening, don’t we?

All living things must have food. So what is food? Food is composed of atoms and molecules bonded together with energy, that all living things must have to grow and stay alive. (Scientists often call this food nutrients). Green plants make their own foods. They take atoms and molecules from soil, water, and air, bonding them together with energy they take from sunlight to make their own foods using a strange process called photosynthesis. That’s another big word we will learn about later.

Most animals get food by eating plants and reusing the plant’s energy-rich body tissues (leaves, stems, roots, seeds, fruits) as their food. Some animals even eat other animals and take the eaten animal’s tissues to use for their own food needs.

Do plants react? When watched patiently for a long time, scientists have learned that plants do react. Tiny holes in their leaves open and close as needed to take in certain nutrients and to get rid of some wastes. Tiny roots grow in all directions through the soil, seeking soil nutrients. The woody parts of a tree and the stems of stemmy plants are mostly special tiny tubes that pump water and nutrients from the roots to the branches and leaves. Special living tubes in plant leaves, stems, and roots transport nutrients made in their leaves throughout the plant to where they are needed. We generally can’t see these plant activities going on all the time in plants but scientists have seen, measured, and documented these plant activities many times.

Let’s sort this out. How we can spot living things among nonliving things?

All living things react to their surroundings in their own way.

All living things must have oxygen, which most breathe to get.

All living things must seek nutrients (foods) and water for growth and staying alive.

And now we should add the following:

All living things use energy all the time, which they take from their foods (foods made by plants, trapping energy from sunlight).

All living things must have mild body temperatures, which they get for themselves in various ways. Many animals take energy from their foods and use that energy as heat to keep warm. Other animals must move around to find places with warm temperatures. Many plants are seasonal and only actively grow when the temperature is warm. Other plants, like trees, have a dormant season. They sleep when it is too cold or too hot.

All living things have a way to reproduce new copies of themselves. Sooner or later, all living things die. It’s their offspring that keep our Earth covered with its vast variety of living things.

So how do you know you too are alive? Partly because we humans also do all of these things listed above.

There is still another way all living things are found to be alive, and are also very much alike. This way of knowing about life wasn’t discovered until about four hundred years ago, when the microscope was invented. Scientists, peering through the lenses of their new microscopes at plant leaves and tiny shavings of animal (and human) skin, were astounded to see that every living thing they looked at under their microscopes was composed of tiny little boxes they called cells. No kidding! Every living thing’s body is composed of tiny cells! Think about that.

It doesn’t matter if we are thinking of a redwood tree, an elephant, a mouse, or even a disease-causing bacterium; all living things’ cells are all just about the same very small size and are similar looking. Totally amazing! It’s kind of like saying all living things are made from the same set of Legos, but instead of Legos, each building block of any living thing is a living cell.

A single cell of any living thing is so small it is hard to see and study, even with a microscope. It took many years and many improvements in the quality of microscopes before scientists began to know much about what’s inside each living cell, and how we can know anything at all about how cells can each be alive. What you, today, may quickly and so easily learn about living cells took thousands of scientists working their whole lifetimes to figure out. We should be grateful to them.

Your own body is made, almost completely of millions upon millions of these tiny living cells. So is your pet dog or cat’s body and Ole McDonald’s cows, pigs, and chickens. So are all the plants in your yard and Mom’s garden. So is nearly all of the stuff in the grocery store that Mom brings home for you to eat.

This finding and bringing home food is nothing new. Cave dwellers of ancient times spent most of their lives, living dangerously in the wilderness, seeking edible plants and hunting and killing animals for their food. They didn’t have grocery stores or supermarkets. History books call them the hunter-gatherers.

There is so much for you to learn about living cells, whole books are filled with such knowledge. You will study much more about cells and life in your life science and biology classes. For this book, I only want to help you take a glimpse of some of these things and entities, so you can know more about the wonders of our loving God’s creation that you are so much a part of, and maybe figure out why He has put you here.

To learn about such unseeable things as cells, scientists often make models. You have made and played with models. Many toys are models, like toy trucks and cars, and dollies, and teddy bears. A model is usually somewhat like the real thing, only made much simpler, and often smaller. But in the case of cells, a model of a cell must be very much larger than a real cell, so we can see it.

Remember, earlier in this story, we read a little about atoms. You will also learn about atoms by using models because atoms are even much, much smaller than living cells. Atoms are real, but atoms are not living. How strange, that God chose to create and use such very tiny atoms as His building blocks to build everything in the universe.

We have been thinking of very small stuff—cells and atoms. Now, let’s think of God’s fantastic creation from a different point of view. Our Earth itself is completely made of more atoms than anyone could imagine. And so is the sun, and moon, and every one of the planets in our solar system. They are all made of uncountable numbers of these very tiny atoms. More than that, our solar system is only one among billions and billions of other solar systems and stars making up the Milky Way galaxy, our home galaxy—all made of the same kinds of very tiny atoms. A few years ago, scientists were able to launch the Hubble telescope out into space, outside of Earth’s atmosphere, where they could see better. The Hubble telescope, revealed other whole galaxies like our Milky Way galaxy, more than anyone could count, scattered everywhere, all over God’s gigantic, humungous universe. Some galaxies are so far away that the light coming from the stars within them, traveling at light speed ever since the beginning of God’s creation, is just now getting to the Hubble telescope. All we can say is wow!

When I started this article for my book, I was trying to excite you with ideas about God’s wonderful creation of life. But to do this, we also had to think about things very small and things very large, and even about entities that are not things, entities not made of atoms. God imagined and created all of these things, very small, very large, and also all the ideas and entities not made of atoms that He intends for us to imagine with our minds. Imagination is one of the greatest gifts God has given you, and me. As you continue reading, we are going to use our imaginations (and models and words) to discover and think deeper about the many wonders of God’s creation. Check your seat belt!

On Our Body’s Windows to the World

Let’s think of your five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), your five windows to the physical world around you.

You are blessed with many kinds of awareness.

Such a big, big world extending astronomically farther than we can imagine

A fascinating, beautiful, fragrant, musical, rhythmic world everywhere we look.

A world of so many unique big things like mountains, oceans, ships, buildings, trains. airplanes, trucks, machines, cities—.

A world colorfully and abundantly filled with living things, both plant and animal, from microscopic sized to as big as redwood trees—all living things including us.

So many kinds of nonliving stuff, like rocks, water, air, wood, fire, plastics, and all the things we take home from stores and shopping centers.

Things necessary and useful, things fun, challenging, some dangerous

You sense heat and cold, rainfall and drought, time and space, activity, and change, disappointment and yet, hope and joy.

With your eyes, you sense light and darkness (which is only the absence of light), and in the light, a panorama of many objects of uncountable shapes and sizes, reflections in many colors, things transparent, things bright and shiny, things rough or shadowy, immanent or distant.

Some objects are apparently stationary, while others are moving through space with various speeds and directions, sometimes colliding with other objects, both then ricocheting like pinballs, in new directions—or squishing like a stepped-on overripe banana.

Within this panorama, your attention is always naturally drawn more to the movements of objects than to the objects themselves. Think about that.

Now, be very still.

With your ears, you can detect many sources of vibrating objects and colliding objects, producing a medley of sounds, some soft and pleasing (harmonious), others loud or harsh, nearby or faraway. You soon learn which objects are making each of this variety of sounds, such knowing thus expanding, always adapting your worldview.

Your brain automatically makes math calculations you know nothing about. For example, your two eyes are situated apart from each other on your head so your brain can use geometry to calculate distances between you and other objects.

Likewise, your two ears, on opposite sides of your head not only give your brain a means of determining the direction of the vibrating sound source from you, but also help your brain to calculate how far away any certain vibrating object is from you, and if moving, in what direction it is moving.

We must realize that our five senses are tools of our brain.

There are no actual sounds or sights (no miniature objects) present anywhere in your brain. What we perceive as sight, or sound, or touch, taste or smell emerges (we know not how), in our conscious mind from the mutual workings of our brain and mind.

After our brain collects all the nerve signals coming to it from all our body sensors, it sorts and organizes all these differing nerve impulses. Due to the multiple and entangled nerve pathways in your brain, what you hear in your mind is influenced by what you see in your mind, and vice versa. Also, what you see and hear arouses feelings and emotions welling up from deep within your body, such as awareness of beauty, harmony, peace, and feelings such as excitement, affection, remoteness, pain, or fear.

Now, close your eyes and plug your ears.

All over the surface of your body, your skin contains millions of touch sensors, especially concentrated on your fingertips and lips.

With these sensors, your brain is made aware of your body’s contact with separate objects it recognizes, at any point on your body’s surface where contact occurs, and if the contact feels inviting or dangerous.

Your touch sensors detect separate objects’ sizes, shapes, textures, and physical state, solid, liquid, or gas, as well as relative temperatures and temperature differences between your body and these separate objects.

With your hand, brush the hair on you head or arm, being careful not to touch your skin. Every hair shaft has a sensor attached to its root that senses any bending of the hair shaft.

Your touch receptors can detect particles even smaller than your eyes can detect. Feel a breeze and you’re feeling air molecules brushing your skin. Your touch receptors, especially in your fingertips, sense much finer details of the surfaces you contact than can your eyes.

We call these felt differences textures.

Feel a shiny metal surface, a plastic surface, a glass surface, a towel, the leather of your shoes or ball mitt, the head of a straight pin, then the point of the pin. Distinguishing textures greatly increases our knowledge, understanding, and emotional appreciation of our surroundings. The point of a pin can be hurtful.

Think of trying to sleep on the bare ground as opposed to sleeping on freshly laundered bed sheets, or living with, as opposed to without heating and air-conditioning.

These touch sensors relay to your brain, current happenings at any point on your skin itself. Your dog licks your cheek. Yuck. Itches usually indicate a local skin problem—possible invasion by other organisms. Bruising, cuts, and burns are quickly recognized as hurtful and needful of our attention and care.

Our senses of taste and smell are located within our nose and mouth. These senses are similar in that they are both miniature chemistry-analysis laboratories. Smell tests the air molecules breathed into the nostrils. The taste buds, primarily located on the tongue, analyze substances dissolved in water or in the saliva in your mouth.

Though their functions are carried out chemically, electro-chemical nerve messages from them to the brain trigger various pleasurable sensations in our brain, such as sweet, sour, tangy, and fragrance plus warning messages such as fowl and repulsive.

Our brain holds in memory many unique odors and tastes encountered in our past experiences, and this memory, besides helping our brains classify the sources of these sensations, when sensing them again, brings back memories of these past experiences and frequently arouses emotional reactions to them. Perhaps the smell of salty air brings back memories of a fun trip to a beach several years ago.

Let’s think deeper bout these five marvelous senses.

We must wonder what kind of being could have the intelligence, the skill, and the wisdom to design and precisely replicate all of these wonderful sensors into every human’s body? And more so, link these sensors, through a complex nervous system to a computer-like brain and reasoning mind?

If there were no body sensors, could there be any form of human communication? Could there be human intelligence? Could human consciousness even exist? Could there be anything identifiable as human nature? We were obviously designed—designed by our loving Creator, God, with such sensors, brains, and minds, and souls, to live, even to flourish in this physical world he created for his pleasure; for our instruction and character building.

In this physical world we live in, we all encounter and experience both good things and much evil. Because of evil’s historical presence, some people are handicapped, even from birth, handicaps such as blindness or lack of hearing or of crippling.

Our loving, compassionate God is very aware of such biological errors. Among our human capabilities God instilled in each of us is our mind’s ability to compensate (work around or substitute for) the loss of certain body features, such as blindness or deafness. Little understood by most of us, such allowed maladies may become character-building clinics for both the disadvantaged and the brave caretaker.

You might want to find writings and read about Helen Keller, who lost both her eyesight and hearing to a disease (possibly scarlet fever) when she was only nineteen months old. It is a wonderful story of how she learned to compensate for such terrible losses and learned other ways of reading and communicating. Helen Keller, even with her handicaps, became a well-known advocate for all handicapped and for women’s and children’s rights. She was personally acquainted with seven US presidents and is often called the president’s whisperer.

Our body, with its sensory systems is physical, made of atoms. Yet strangely to our limited human understanding, we are also God’s spiritual beings. Some people try to deny this, but our Bible tells us it is so, and if we observe our humanity with a receptive mind, we are soon convinced by numerous Bible-supporting evidences that our spiritual being is real.

Our spiritual self is not made of atoms but rather is the invisible but surely present real person, you (or I), that emerges from spiritual realms about us by God’s loving will, to reside within, and to be expressed through our physical body. We should again read Genesis 2:7, which states, "Then the Lord formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being."

It is our spiritual being within us that gives us consciousness of ourself and the world about us.

It is also through our mind, a part of our spiritual being, that we each have communications skills, feelings producing emotions, original mental thoughts, motivations, and free will, all of which affect our developing personality, our worldview and our personal character.

It is both through our personality and character, as well as the appearance of our physical body that both we and other people recognize each of us as a unique self. Yet even though personality and character are physically recognizable, they are not made of atoms but rather, emerge to our consciousness from spiritual realms about us.

Our individual personalities and character, developing as we grow and mature, are a blending together of both our physical body and our spiritual nature. Neither spiritual human character nor physical human being exists without the other.

Our World Up Close, the Basics

The house or apartment you live in is made of several kinds of materials. Lumber, or wood, are cut from trees; concrete is made from rocks; bricks are made from baked clay; some plastics are made from things in petroleum and plant materials; and several other basic materials such as metals, glass, and even leather, are made from animal skins. Did you know that glass is made from certain kinds of sand, heated until it melts? You probably know the paper of this book was made from the wood of trees, and the ink was made from either plant materials or petroleum or a mixture of the two.

In Mom’s kitchen, the pots and pans and the silverware are made from metals but the handles are usually plastics or wood; the plates and bowls are made of baked clay, similar to bricks (unless they are paper or plastic). Your clothing, bedding, towels, curtains, rugs and carpeting are made of cotton, wool, silk, and numerous kinds of plastic threads, usually made from petroleum. Leather, made from animal skins, plus bones, and other parts of animals, have been used to make useful things throughout human history. So what are Mom’s drinking glasses made of? Ha! Trick question—but not always. Lots of times we drink from plastic or paper glasses and cups, huh.

Let’s get down to basics. If we go back and list the basic materials that make up about everything around us, we see that our list is short, and includes wood, rocks, clay, sand, metals, some plant materials, animal skins and other animal products, and petroleum. I’m sure you are familiar with all of these kinds of materials, except perhaps, petroleum. A common name for petroleum is crude oil and natural gas, both of which people pump from deep in the crust of the earth. In fact, all of the materials in our list come from the Earth’s crust. They are commonly called natural resources.

Many people never stop to think about it, but the fact that we humans have these natural resources is no accident—even if some mistaken scientists try to say they all occurred accidently as a result of millions of years of evolution. Not true. Our loving God intentionally designed our earthly home to include all these natural resources for our human conquest and dominion of this earthly home He provides. I believe this sincerely, and I hope you will be convinced too, if you’ll keep reading my story.

There is so much for you to learn in school about all these natural resources and how people have learned, and continue to learn, to process them to make all the wonderful things we can buy in stores and online, processed and refined in all kinds of factories—even jewelry, cosmetics, medicines, and money.

We haven’t even mentioned water, the most needed basic material of all. You may be thinking, What about foods? Aren’t they a basic material we need? They are already included in our list. If you can’t figure that out, keep on reading. Oh, and most basic for producing our foods, and wood, and petroleum, and animal products, must be the earth’s soils, the only suitable place on Earth for most plants to grow is in soil. Is that confusing? I’m going to mention two more things to add to our list. That’s gases of our atmosphere, and fire. Now, that’s confusing! We’re going to sort this all out as we think a little bit more about the things on our list in this chapter. Then, later in the book, we will learn more about each item on our list, how many of these materials are processed and refined, and how they each affect and often change our lives. Let’s make a neater list, then we will learn something very important about many items on our list.

Our List of Earth’s Most Used and Useful Basic Natural Resources

Wood

Water and flowing water

Foods

Rocks

Gases of the atmosphere

Soils

Sand

Plant materials

Wind

Clay

Animal skins and products

Fire

Metals

Petroleum

About Wood

All wood comes from the trunks and limbs of trees. Humans have made use of wood throughout recorded history. Probably, at first, wood was used to make handles for clubs and shafts for spears and arrows, then also as poles for tent making. Using sharpened rocks, they worked hard to shape logs into canoes and beams for simple shelters. With the discovery of iron, copper, and other metals, wood-handled metal axes were used to chop and shape logs into smoother beams, and lumber for making ships, houses, and other buildings. Invention of saws and planes, and other woodworking tools helped to shape wood into furniture, wagons and wagon wheels, and even into paper. Especially in furniture making and interior finishing, wood crafting, and selection of source for utility and beauty became an art form.

From early in human history, wood was used as fuel. In ancient times, they knew nothing about fuel. They just knew wood would burn and produce heat and light. And while wood was burning, the heat it gave off kept them warm and made their food more edible by cooking it! The light burning wood gave off helped keep predators away during long, fearful nights. There’s so much more wonderful knowledge about wood and man’s history of using wood. But we must move on to our next topic.

About Rocks

The Earth’s hard, wrinkled-up crust is almost entirely composed of hard rocks. Underneath this rocky surface, however, the Earth’s interior is a very hot, liquid (or molten) mass that scientists call magma. This magma is a mixture of molten minerals. When the magma is pushed to the Earth’s surface, it cools and hardens into the rocks of Earth’s crust. This rocky crust is cracked, and broken up into several gigantic separate pieces which float on the molten magma underneath. Earth’s continents, like the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia are parts of these geologic plates. Volcanos and earthquakes usually occur along the edges of these geologic plates and are good evidences of things we have learned about Earth’s interior.

Let’s pretend two pieces of pizza are two of Earth’s geologic plates. If you push these two pieces of pizza together, notice how the edges buckle up. In the real world, entire mountain chains, like the Rocky Mountains and Appalachian Mountains are actually the buckled-up edges resulting from collisions between two enormous floating geologic plates. The Appalachian Mountains, extending from Maine, southward through the eastern United States into Georgia are where two geologic plates collided. In another example, the Rocky Mountains extending from Alaska, southward through western Canada, and on through western United States, Mexico, and South America, are places where two geologic plates have collided and buckled up into mountains.

All rocks making up these geologic plates are composed of materials scientists have identified as minerals. There are many kinds of minerals with differing features that make them distinct from one another. Most minerals have a crystalline structure, somewhat like salt crystals. Salt is a mineral. If these crystalline surfaces are smoothed and polished, some minerals such as diamonds or emeralds are treasured as jewels. Most rocks are mixtures of several kinds of minerals. While generally not suitable for polishing, many of these minerals are great resources, mined and separated for making many kinds of objects useful to we humans. All metals, as well as coal and uranium, are such minerals held in Earth’s rocky surface.

Throughout human history, people have learned how to search for deposits of pure minerals, which have great value. Long ago, veins of pure iron and copper that formed in cracks in the rocks were sometimes found in the walls of caves. People learned to dig into these veins of metals, them out and purify them for use. These hand-dug caves are called mines, and they follow the veins of precious metals underground. History books contain great stories about gold rushes and silver mines, and how mining for these rocky treasures changed many people’s lives. Pure minerals of a certain kind are often needed to make special things. But most of these needed minerals are never found in pure form, like people sometimes find iron, gold, and silver. These pure minerals must be separated from certain kinds of rocks by heating the rocks until they melt. Through many experiments including many failed experiments over the years, people have learned how to separate the liquid rock into its separate pure minerals.

It’s hard to imagine how many people, down through human history, spent their entire lives working to find, mine, and process Earth’s rocks to get the minerals that are used to make many of the things we use every day but just take for granted.

About Sand

Sand is tiny bits of rocks that have been broken up by the forces of water, wind, and other forces, happening over long periods of time. Look at the varying colors of sand grains. These colors are evidences of different minerals the sand grains are composed of.

Most toddlers enjoy playing in sand boxes. We all enjoy playing on sandy beaches. In some places and over long periods of time, wind has blown sand from river and lake beds into sand dunes that look a lot like waves of the ocean. People have made a great sport of building and riding in special vehicles called dune buggies over these sand dunes.

Earlier, we thought about glass and found that glass is made from sand. How? Not just any sand, but only certain kinds of sand make good glass. These kinds of sand contain the right minerals. People melt this special sand in very hot furnaces until it becomes liquid—like it was as magma. Then they purify and form this hot liquid into thin sheets to make windows and into other shapes for things like drinking glasses. But they must work fast, before the liquified sand cools back to its hardened form. A few people have learned a special trade called glass blowing. They can make beautiful figurines and special flasks scientists use in some of their experiments.

Sand has many other practical uses, including making sand paper and making concrete. Can you imagine how much concrete is used all over the world in constructing our homes, city buildings including skyscrapers, sidewalks, parking lots, streets and highways, airport runways, as well as factories and warehouses? That takes a LOT of sand!

About Clay

Clay is also formed as the result of the forces of wind, water, and other forces constantly wearing away the surfaces of Earth’s rocky crust. Clay is much finer particles than sand and comes from different kinds of rocks, generally called shales. These tiny particles of shale are more like flakes than grains, and are slick, also sticky when wet. We have all experienced the job of cleaning our shoes or boots after walking on bare ground rich in clay.

People called potters have learned how to find just the right kind of clay to make all kinds of pots, urns, vases, bowls, and other useful objects out of clay. When moistened with water, clay becomes slick but also sticky and can be formed into many different shapes. Making pottery is an art that has developed down through the entire history of humanity. Archeologists, who search for traces of ancient humans many times find shards of ancient pieces of pottery around caves and other campsites of early humans.

Use of pottery wheels, which slowly rotate a ball of clay while the potter shapes it, and the use of ovens to bake the clay into its hardened form, as well as using colorful dyes to decorate their pots and other objects they make are all tools of the pottery business. A special kind of clay forms porcelain, which is used to make fine dinnerware, often called china. This name has its own history which you could learn about on the Internet.

Bricks are made of shaped and baked clay. Millions of buildings and houses, world-wide, are covered with bricks because bricks are very durable. Durable means they last a long time. In the past, bricks were often used to make city streets. Different clays used in brick making have different colors. Well-designed brick walls have a certain beauty people enjoy and appreciate.

When the skill of writing was first known, people drew symbols and wrote words with meaning on tablets they made of clay, which they then hardened to make them durable. Archeologists still find these clay tablets, though usually broken into pieces, scattered where people lived long ago. It has been a great challenge for some people to try to piece together and interpret the meanings of the symbols and words written on these old clay tablets.

Today, clay has many uses, including its use as a base for many cosmetics. If you are interested, there is much information you can learn about clays and how people use them in many ways to improve their lives.

About Metals

We have already learned a little bit about some metals while discussing the topic of rocks. There are some neat things to know about metals. Besides being hard and very durable, another important feature of most metals is that, with heating, they can be bent and formed into many shapes. Early mankind used them to make knives, spearpoints, and arrowheads. Metals made durable plows, hoes, shovels, and other tools used in farming. In Bible times and through the Middle Ages, the times of kings, castles, and knights, copper, iron, and tin were used to make body armor.

The invention of the printing press and the steam engine in the sixteenth century started a new era for mankind called the iron age. The printing press, itself made of iron, made books holding information about new discoveries available to everyone, everywhere. Engines made of iron were able to provide the power to do the hard work, giving mankind the freedom to do creative things. With this new freedom, people created much bigger and better and variety of things than had ever been possible using only man power and horses or oxen. Many of these things people found the opportunity to make are made of metals. Metals have great strength and durability. Cars and trucks, tractors, and farm machinery, all kinds of tools and iron beams for the framework of new buildings and bridges are all made largely of metals. Heavy machinery like dozers, graders, and cranes, as well as very large ships, trains, and airplanes are also made mostly of metals.

When the knowledge of how to generate and use electricity was discovered, another important use of metals was found. This is because metals are good electric conductors (they carry electric current from one place to another). Many other materials, including most rocks, do not carry electricity and so are called nonconductors or insulators. Copper is a very good electrical conductor and is widely used for the electric lines on highline poles that we see everywhere, as well as in all the electrical wiring in homes and all other buildings throughout the world. Water and human bodies are both electric conductors. If an electric current comes in contact with a person’s body, it can be deadly. That is why electric wires are always wrapped with some insulating material to confine the electricity to the wires and protect lives.

Metals are widely used in things as different as eyeglass frames; in paints and color dyes; braces for arms, legs, and teeth; as an additive in gasoline; and even in some medications.

About Water

Scientists often call Earth the water planet because it is one of only a very few celestial objects (objects of the heavens) that holds much water. Most of Earth’s water fills its oceans, lakes, and rivers; forms glaciers and polar icepacks; fills reservoirs deep within the earth’s crust; and is the humidity and clouds present in Earth’s atmosphere. There is enough water on Earth to completely submerge even the highest mountain peaks. God proved that to Noah when He sent the great flood. But the Bible tells us the rainbow we sometimes see in the clouds is God’s promise that such a flood will never happen again.

When the sun shines on water surfaces, individual molecules of water evaporate (transform from the liquid to the gaseous state) and rise into Earth’s atmosphere, adding to the humidity. Warm air can hold more humidity than cold air. So when the air cools, the water molecules in the form of humidity begin to stick together, forming the mists of clouds and the raindrops, snow, and hail that fall back to the Earth. Earth’s soils soak up this rainfall like a sponge, but rainwater runs off of steep slopes, off hard rocky lands or roofs and concrete surfaces into streams and rivers and back to the lakes and oceans. This is a simplified story of Earth’s water cycle.

Flowing water has much power. Sometimes people speak of water as Earth’s great leveler. Flowing water picks up and carries sand grains which act like tiny chisels, chipping away at all the hard surfaces the water flows over. This chipping action is called erosion. Earth’s rocky surface is constantly being eroded away by flowing water, lowering mountains and hills, and filling Earth’s lakes as well as the valleys the streams and rivers flow through.

Through much of human history, people have captured some of the power of flowing water with water wheels, mostly used to power rotating grind stones which ground the grains they harvested into flour for cooking and bread making. Sometimes, these water wheels have been used to pump water to higher elevations for irrigating fields or to power saws for cutting logs into lumber. Even today, in places where sufficient water is flowing, water turbines (improved water wheels) are used to power electric generators, providing electricity for many cities.

Water is found in three phases—solid (ice), liquid, and water vapor (one of Earth’s atmospheric gases), often called humidity. We might wonder how God so wisely set the temperatures at which water changes its form between ice, liquid water, and water vapor (or steam); how He determines how much of Earth’s water should be kept in the form of ice, liquid water, and water vapor; and then, how he so precisely established the distances between earth and sun so as to maintain just the right temperature ranges suitable for sustaining these proportions of water forms. It seems as though God was thinking especially of His living creatures and causing Earth’s water to always fit their needs.

When water freezes into its crystalline form, ice, the individual particles of water, called molecules, are bonded into crystalline forms, packed less tightly than when water is in its liquid form. Therefore, when water freezes into ice, it expands and is said to be less dense than liquid water, and consequently, ice floats on liquid water. This is such a wonderful example of God’s wise planning. If ice were more dense than liquid water, it would sink to the bottoms of Earth’s lakes and oceans. But instead, ice always floats and forms an insulating layer over cold lakes and oceans, keeping the liquid water underneath warm enough to keep the fishes and all ocean life alive.

Also, because water expands when it freezes into ice, the water filling cracks in rocks exerts great force when it freezes, splitting big rocks into smaller rocks. This, along with the erosion caused by flowing water gradually turns rocks into sand, silt, and clay that forms sediments in the bottoms of rivers, lakes, and oceans.

The main ingredient of every living thing on earth, including we humans, is water. We humans, and most living things, are about 70 percent water. Imagine, if all the water in your body went to the bottom, you would be only water clear up to above your waist.

All living things must constantly take in new water from the surroundings, and they all give off water containing the body’s wastes. One property of water that makes this work so well is that water is a great solvent. In fact, there is nothing known to man that can dissolve solids into their individual molecules as well as water does.

An interesting thing to do, if your mom will let you have enough kitchen salt, and you promise her