Posted September 23, 2026
President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday that he has a “big decision to make”: “Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before, maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world? Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again?” (For much more on the president’s speech and issues related to the United Nations, see Dr. Ryan Denison’s Focus article from yesterday.)
With Iran, it’s clear that doing nothing is tantamount to doing something. Iran’s operators recently used Anthropic’s AI to build targeting files on US warships. According to Foreign Affairs, the “second front” it has built by supporting the Houthis has “transformed the Middle East’s wars.”
Closer to home: The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran is considering sabotaging internet cables in the Persian Gulf. As RAND Senior Research Fellow John Aitken notes,
These cables form a largely unseen foundation of the global economy, carrying more than 95 percent of international data traffic. Their role extends far beyond everyday internet and call usage. They support financial transactions, government communications, and the increasingly data-intensive operations of the global technology sector.
Because the waters in the Strait of Hormuz are shallow, cables lying at its floor are especially vulnerable to attack. If Iran were to sabotage them today, how much of our world would be different tomorrow? A single cable accidentally cut by construction workers in New Jersey delayed hundreds of flights at major airports Monday; imagine the consequences if nearly all international data traffic were disrupted for even a day.
If doing nothing allows something, are we at least partially responsible for the something?
Does the same apply to God?
After Annie Dillard’s recent death at the age of eighty-one, I’ve been reading her first novel, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She wrote it when she was twenty-eight; it won the Pulitzer Prize the next year. I can see why: she was a masterful wordsmith, able to describe objects of nature as commonplace as a grasshopper in ways so vivid as to be unforgettable.
She was also brilliant at citing the thoughts of brilliant thinkers across history. For example, she quoted the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus as suggesting that God, like an oracle, neither “declares nor hides, but sets forth by signs.” In her view, such “signs” of nature are God’s revelation to us.
Heraclitus was right about nature, of course, but wrong about revelation. The Ephesian had no interaction with Judaism and lived five centuries before Christ. As a result, he had no knowledge of the God who both “declares” (“thus saith the Lord” or its equivalent is found more than three thousand times in Scripture) and “hides” from his children when doing so is best for them (cf. Isaiah 45:15).
Nonetheless, the Creator also “sets forth by signs” his character in his creation (Romans 1:19–20). Sinful people say, “The Lᴏʀᴅ does not see; the God of Jacob does not perceive” (Psalm 94:7). To the contrary:
Understand, O dullest of the people! Fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not see? He who disciplines nations, does he not rebuke? He who teaches man knowledge—the Lᴏʀᴅ—knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath (vv. 8–10).
It is logical to extrapolate divine characteristics from divine creation. If God made the eye, he can see better than we can. If he made the mind, he can think more profoundly than we can. As a result, the psalmist prayed, “When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul” (v. 19).
My problem is not that God does not do something in the world every moment of every day, working with such sovereignty that he sees every sparrow that falls to the ground (Matthew 10:29) while allowing humans the consequences of their misused freedom (cf. John 7:17). My problem is that I need better eyes to see him at work in creation in ways that draw me closer to the Creator.
Annie Dillard wrote that “beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.” For her part, she could testify, “everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole works sparks and flames.”
Here’s the key, she suggests:
If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days. It is that simple. What you see is what you get.
In other words, I will experience God today to the degree that I admit I need to experience him. “You will seek me and find me,” he assures us, “when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Frederick Buechner explained that we must seek God with such passion and purpose “not, one assumes, because you have to beat a path to God’s door before God will open it, but because until you beat the path maybe there’s no way of getting to your door.”
If “what you see is what you get,” you will get only what you see.
What will you “get” today?
“The world is an example of the workings of God, because while we observe the work, the Worker is brought before us.” —Ambrose of Milan (c. AD 340–397)
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