Yesterday I saw a black toy car about the size of a shoe box with 3-inch tires zip around the street, zigzagging, bucking, and avoiding curbs and bushes. Then I spotted a young boy remotely operating it, using an electronic device with his thumbs, signaling that plastic beast what to do and where to go. His father was standing right behind him, to help him master it, just in case things got out of hand.

Walking through my local park, I watched another father-son team steer the flight of a gas-powered model airplane into stalling climbs and steep nosedives. They had to avoid tangling with a kite-runner coached by his proud dad. A soccer ball-sized, four-prop drone hovered over my head, whirring like a hummingbird, before flying straight up and away. I looked around and saw a smiling hobbyist handing his drone’s remote to a son. It won’t be long before drones will be delivering next-day online purchases, flown right to my doorstep. The incredible magic of all this might have alarmed onlookers a mere 100 years ago— or maybe even primitives who today live on remote islands.

Later, during rush hour, I stood on an Oceanside overpass looking south onto California I-5. Five lanes of highway traffic on each side of a median streamed in opposite directions as far as the eye could see. A private two-engine jet — sleek as a white swallow-tailed kite, but scarcely as silent — flew southward parallel to traffic. From my high vantage point, I caught myself looking about for another father-son team to be regulating this scene.

What’s this? I see between my shoes a column of ants, streaming in both directions on a narrow trail, without collisions. We humans beset with all our freeway accidents, traffic pollution, and noise cannot match the simple, efficient industry of ants (cf. Proverbs 6:6-11). Are they remotely controlled by their queen to repair a tunnel and herd aphids? Is she in turn ruled by that “Unknown God” the ancient Greeks worshiped in awe of such mysteries (cf. Acts 17:23)?

With wonders and marvels happening here and all around the globe, how shall I explain to my primitive mind that it’s not magic at all? Common sense and sensibility would prefer the Father-Son paradigm of Almighty God, Who remotely controls phenomena and events.

You control human events — You give rulers their power and take it away, and You are the source of wisdom and knowledge. You explain deep mysteries, because even the dark is light to you. You are the God who was worshiped by my ancestors (Daniel 2:21-23).