“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system through which God speaks to us.” —Goethe
Notice carefully the following words: “From whose womb comes the ice? And the frost of heaven, who gives it birth? The waters harden like stone, and the surface of the deep is frozen” (Job 28:29-30). There are thousands of Google sites that purport to answer the question, “Why does water freeze from the top down?” or something similar. When I was a teen, I recall hearing Dr. David Gooding telling of two men walking down a city street. “Why do these street lights shine?” one asked the other. The answer involved wires and filaments, electrons and photons and the like. But, observed the good Doctor, the man was answering “how,” not “why.” The answer to “why” was that the city fathers thought it would be safer to have them. All these sites are offering explanations for how, in the Lord’s words, “the surface of the deep is frozen.” Other substances become more dense as they change from liquid to solid form. As the molecules slow down, they become more structured, more compacted, and therefore more dense. But water is the opposite, as seen in your floating ice cubes. This is a result of the bonding of the hydrogen in the molecules, where they arrange in a lattice structure with empty spaces between. If water followed the general rule, all northern lakes and rivers would freeze from the bottom up, flooding everywhere and killing most of the life within. At this point we come to the question, “Why?” If everything we see was a mere accident of nature, then “Why?” is a nonsensical question. You can’t have a purpose without a Purposer or a design without a Designer. The specific answer to “Why?” is practical, but the ultimate answer is that God wants us to know Him and trust the wisdom of His perfect plan.