Dinosaurs are a testament to God’s love – Life and Faith Story
In January, when, in the cycle of the church year we celebrated the Baptism of our Lord, one of our Palm Beach parishioners was very moved by the story of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. The references to the Trinity as an expression of God’s being-in-relationship was particularly striking for her.
Confirmed in the Church of St Paul at Palm Beach as a teenager, this person has recently returned to church after 2 decades away and now plays an active role in parish life. Here is a glimpse into her life + faith story.
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Dinosaurs have helped deepen my Christian faith in a very unexpected way, attesting to the sheer magnitude of God’s love.
Would you come with me down this theological rabbit hole? I’m hoping you’ll find it interesting, and perhaps helpful.
Did you know it’s more historically accurate to picture a Tyrannosaurus Rex fighting a jet than battling a Stegosaurus? We humans are closer in time to the T-Rex than the T-Rex ever was to the Stegosaurus!
Current scientific discoveries clock human beings as 200,000 years old. (And while some people may have a different perspective, please hear me out.) We can push that out to around 7 million years if we want to include the entirety of our evolutionary family tree. That thought alone leaves me staring blankly for a few moments. God waited a loooooong time to have you and me right whereHe wants us. That is a lesson in patience that I’m honestly not ready to explore right now. So, let’s get back to the dinos.
In the grand scheme of things, we humans are just babies. Dinosaurs roamed the earth for millions of years – so long, in fact, that the older ones were already fossils while the later ones were still about.
Before that – there were sharks. They began exploring the ocean depths about 400 million years ago.
Before that – horseshoe crabs.
At this point, my brain won’t even try to compute the timespan. But let’s keep going further back.
Before horseshoe crabs there were jellyfish. They are 500 million years old.
Before that – hundreds of millions of years before dinosaurs were even a twinkle in God’s eye, sea sponges were making their debut.
And before that?
Scientists tell us the oldest known fossil found to date clocks in at around 3.7 billion years old. And there could well have been earlier lifeforms. It’s believed that it took billions of years for the newly formed earth to become ready to hold the first traces of life.
And before that – the earth had to be formed to begin with. It was first suspected that this process alone took 10-100 million years. However, some recent studies now think God might have done it in a measly 3 million.
And before that – there was the Word.
And the Word was with God.
And the Word was God.
While we’ve long passed the point where I can keep a meaningful hold on the numbers, it’s amid this awe-inspiring, mind-boggling amount of time that I found a more profound understanding of what God sacrificed for us.
We understand that the Trinity had never been separated before Jesus came to us. They were as one through the long reign of the dinosaurs. Together as creatures took tentative steps onto the newly prepared earth. Inseparable as the oceans swelled with the first signs of life. They lovingly and tenderly shaped the planet and the vast universe to cradle it to their liking, taking Their time, setting everything in motion, watching as Their plans bloomed before Them. And all the while, They carefully left a trail for humanity to follow. A path to explore and discover how They did it. A way for us to glimpse not just Their majesty, but the eons of Their singular harmony. And then we needed Their mercy. And They tore themselves apart to save us and make us whole.
Jesus’ suffering has always been easy for me to empathize with. But it was by looking back on how we got here that I finally considered the turmoil The Father and The Holy Spirit must have endured alongside Jesus the Christ. The human lifetime of Jesus might have only been a blink in the grand scheme of existence, but their separation was a new thing. Costly.
I’ve gone on holiday and missed my loved ones like a physical ache. And I knew they were safe. Happy. How much more profound it must have been for the Trinity. Every second an eternity of dread and anguish when an irreplaceable part of Them was vulnerable. Separated by the restrictions of humanity. No longer immune from danger but destined to experience pain, hardship, loneliness, and sorrow. What horror the Father and the Holy Spirit must have endured to know what was to come. What They had to allow. What They had to watch unfold to their most beloved. And all of it without the comfort of the unity They had forever known.
I look at the dinosaurs, contemplate time, and think about how gut-wrenchingly beautiful Jesus’ baptism must have been for the Trinity. God spoke, and the Holy Spirit descended. It was the closest they could be while the Son remained in human flesh. So close to reconciliation and tortuously far from the perfection They were accustomed to.
I’m so grateful that God created dinosaurs and the plethora of scientific fields that allow us to study them. That God took time with creation and gave people far smarter than me the brains and passion to figure it all out, at least to some degree.
For me, dinosaurs now stand as a testament to God’s love in a way my brain can begin to understand and wouldn’t have thought about on my own. Eons of time, never apart. Until we needed them to be. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all endured together and in their own particular way – for us. They all, together and in their own particular way, suffered for our sins.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.