We recently took a trip to the Smoky Mountains. This may sound odd but you know what struck me more than anything there? Wood. Everything there is made of wood it seems. No veneers, no finely finished or polished exotic hard woods. Just good native American wood. Pine. Oak. Maple. Beech. Log cabins. Rustic furniture. Knotty pine cabinetry and paneling. It's all wood. Everywhere you look.

What a tremendous renewable resource God gave us with trees. Perfect planning in all that He did during creation, carrying us through thousands of years later to today, with renewable resources still at our disposal.

Yes, we have a responsibility to protect and watch over what he gave us. But what perfect planning! And how simple for us today!

My company works a lot with aluminum. Derived from a mined mineral, bauxite, aluminum is amazing as well. It takes a lot of energy to make virgin aluminum. But, after that, it is 100% recyclable with relatively little new energy required, meaning that the same metal is melted down again and again and again, being formed and re-formed into various products. Your soda can today is your car bumper tomorrow and your lifetime aluminum roof the next day.

We're told Jesus was a "tekton," which would have meant he was a stone mason. During His time and place, stone was the readily available resource, also renewable because the stones used to build one building or roadway could be re-used later in a different building or roadway.

All evidence of God's perfect plan which provides so abundantly for us even today.