I read daily in the book above, “Fount of Heaven, Prayers of the Early Church.” It is a daily reminder that Biblical Christianity has not changed in its essence in 2000 years, despite organizational dysfunction and theological disputes over time, mostly over non-essentials to salvation, like, is the communion wafer the actual body and blood of the Lord Jesus, or a wafer of bread eaten in rememberance of Him as he himself commanded us to do at the last supper: “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying,
This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
Luke 22:19 (English Standard Version).
Today I read the prayer, “Merciful Creator, You Give Us Life.” The prayer is attributed to Apostolic Constitutions.
The Apostolic Constitutions or Constitutions of the Holy Apostles (Latin: Constitutiones Apostolorum) is a Christian collection divided into eight books which is classified among the Church Orders, a genre of early Christian literature, that offered authoritative pseudo-apostolic prescriptions on moral conduct, liturgy and Church organization. The work can be dated from 375 to 380 AD. The provenance is usually regarded as Syria, probably Antioch. The author is unknown. . .” — Wikipedia
Here is the prayer “Merciful Creator, You Give Us Life.” I have a good scientific background and the words regarding creation by God do not conflict with that science background. God could have created with evolution, managing the myriad of birds and butterflies. But I doubt it. However creation proceeded and proceeds today, the force behind it is God’s Spirit directing all. Scientists do not know what a force is, just how it works and mathematical formulas for them. See my blog post “What is a Force” linked at the end of this post along with three of my past posts questioning the evidence for Darwinian evolution, including evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould’s denial that gradualism in evolution is supported by the paleontological (fossil) evidence and novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s denial of evolution based on his previous professional study of butterflies before he became a novelist.
The scientific laws of nature, as they are discovered, are commands of God to nature, as exemplified in the following prayer. Evolution has not and likely will never explain the “evolution” of the DNA molecule or the animal eye, for example. Or the “evolution” of human rational thought from brute matter and atoms. C. S. Lewis argued that emergence of rational thought in natural history was the best argument against human evolution in his book, “Miracles” in 1947 (revised in 1960).
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Merciful Creator, You Give Us Life
You are blessed, O Lord, King of ages, who by Christ
have made the whole world. By him in the beginning you
brought all the disordered parts into order. You divided
the waters from the sky and put the spirit of life into them.
You set up the earth, stretched out the heavens, and
gave life to every creature.
The world is beautified by your power, Lord. The heavens
are fixed as an arch over us, brightened with stars for our
comfort in the darkness. The sun was created for days
and production of fruit, and the moon for the change of
seasons. You brought forth the sky in the midst of the
abyss, and commanded the waters to be gathered
together, and dry land to appear.
As for the sea itself, waters come with a fury – yet they
run back again, stopped by the sand at your command. For
you have said, “This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt.” (Job 38:11)
You also made the sea able to support creatures great
And small, and navigable for ships. You preserve the courses
of shining stars above, and none may depart from your
command. They rise and set for signs of the seasons and years.
You created the animals – belonging to the land,
to the water, to the air, and both to air and water. The
wisdom you granted them is perfectly suited. You provide
for each one.
And at the end of your creation you gave your Wisdom
a way, forming a thinking creature as the citizen of the world.
“Let us make mankind in our image,” you said, “in our likeness”
(Genesis 1:26)
Now you present humans as the world’s ornament. You
have formed them from the elements and prepared a soul
from nothing. You gave them senses, and a mind as the
conductor of the soul.
O Lord God, who describe the motion of rainy clouds,
the flash of lightning, the noise of thunder – everything
that comes together to give us proper food, or a pleasant
atmosphere.
But when people were disobedient, you deprived them of
the life which should have been their reward. Yet you did
not destroy them forever, but laid them to sleep for a time.
And by your Word you call us to resurrection and loose
the bond of death.
You are the reviver of the dead, through Jesus Christ,
who is our hope.
Amen.
— Apostolic Constitutions, “Fount of Heaven,” at 50-51
BETWEEN TWO CITIES 
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