God, Faith, And Science Fairs
Stories
Object:
Contents
"God, Faith, and Science Fairs" by Craig Kelly
"The Road Much Traveled" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
God, Faith, and Science Fairs
by Craig Kelly
Genesis 1:1--2:4a
I slowly began making my way through the makeshift pathways in the gymnasium. The whole room was abuzz with high school students running here and there, getting last-minute items for their displays, making sure everything looked just right. I could hear a couple of "Aw man!"s and "Oh no!"s echo in the room. Apparently, some of the students' displays weren't working the way they had hoped.
Wherever I have lived, I have always tried to make an effort to go to the local high school science fair. Over the years, I guess I'd seen a little of everything -- from the underachievers who had two scrawny, half-dead pea plants for their display to the future MIT graduates who came up with some new fuel alternative by using old banana peels. You never knew what you were going to get.
As the day began, I started walking through and take a closer look at each project, listening to the students run through their spiel about how each project worked. I have to admit, some of them were pretty blasé, but there were a few that caught my eye.
In one experiment, a student took an empty 2-liter Dr. Pepper bottle, and using a piece of thread, an index card, a mirror spot, and a bar magnet, he was able to make his own magnetometer to detect changes in the magnetic field within the room. He told me that because of violent events in our sun's corona, clouds of plasma are shot out of the sun, causing magnetic storms that can momentarily alter the magnetic field on earth. It was a fascinating look at how our sun, burning tens of millions of miles away, can affect earth in ways we don't realize.
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
Some time later, I came across a young woman who had been experimenting with nitrogen and its effect on soil and plant growth. She found that by injecting a richer nitrogen solution into the soil, plants were able to yield a 15-20% larger crop.
And God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth." And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
I smiled as I continued to look at the various projects. Each one had its own take on various parts of creation. Some dealt with biology, others physics or chemistry, others mechanics and technology. It was a fascinating afternoon of scientific discovery. Everyone had something to contribute.
One of the last displays I saw was a young woman, and all she had at her display was a microscope and a laptop. As she began to explain her project, I was captivated. By taking samples of certain protein molecules from muscle tissue, she was able to show how the cell broke down into its individual components, even going so far as to make a computer model of the DNA molecule. She then went on to explain how the DNA molecule worked, how it was akin to a vastly complex computer program determining how every organism developed. It was so complex that it took years for scientists to finally get the sequence of chemicals present in our own DNA. Her project explored the basic building blocks of life itself, from plant life to humanity. Every sequence in human DNA was specifically made to make us who we are.
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
As I was finishing up my tour of the science fair, the school principal walked up beside me. He was a short man in his late 50s with graying hair and a large waistline.
"Excuse me, you're the new minister at the Lutheran church across town, right?"
"Yes, that's correct," I replied. "Thomas Groves."
"Roger Carduff. Pleasure to meet you." After a few more pleasantries, he asked me how I enjoyed the fair.
"Oh, it was wonderful!" I replied. "You have an amazing group of students here."
"Thank you," Carduff replied with a smile. "We take a great deal of pride in them. I must say, I'm curious. We don't see a lot of clergy at events like this. A lot of people would even go so far as to say that science and religion are like oil and water. May I ask what prompted you to come here today?"
I looked around again at the various projects around me, how each one probed into the wonder of God's creation.
"Honestly, Principal Carduff," I said, "coming here is good for my faith."
Craig Kelly writes copy for CSS Publishing Company in Lima, Ohio.
The Road Much Traveled
by Keith Hewitt
Matthew 28:16-20
Wakefulness came with a knock on the door and a muffled voice saying, "We leave soon, Teacher. The moon has nearly set and we want to be on the road before the sun rises." The door opened, then -- just wide enough for a head to be thrust through; the face was monstrous, a thing of moving shadows lit from below by a flickering lamp. Pale orbs appeared in the shadows -- eyes, peering in but not seeing beyond the island of light carved out by the lamp.
"Are you ready, Teacher?" the face asked -- clearer, now that there was no door between it and the man who had been tossing fitfully on the low palette in the corner.
"I will be," the man answered, without sitting up.
"Very well," the face said hesitantly -- paused, as if about to say something else, then just set the lamp on a table next to the door and disappeared. The door closed with a solid clunk.
The man addressed as "Teacher" lay still on the palette and stared at the play of light and shadow on the low ceiling. The light cast by a single small flame wasn't much but to eyes that had spent a night -- well, half a night -- in total darkness, it was bright enough. The gloom that it cast matched the shroud over his soul.
Again.
It had been -- what? A week? Ten days? Whatever. It had been a four day walk from that last hamlet, he knew that for sure. Nearly a thousand stadia with each step grinding off a little more skin from the soles of his feet. His knees ached with the memory and his feet burned even as he lay there, as though he were already marching once more.
He had found people to listen, at this place -- what was it called? He raised his hands, wiped sleep-sand out of his eyes and tried to remember. Names of towns and villages tumbled through his mind and slipped through the loose net of memory... he could not recall where he was. Fingers rubbed harder, pressed against his eyes as though they might somehow force out an answer, but it wasn't there.
One might as well squeeze a rock and hope for water.
Who do you think you are, Moses? The Teacher smiled grimly in the darkness and lowered his hands to his side again, used them to hold himself in check while he slid his legs off the palette stiffly, and let his feet drop to the cold stone floor. Feet planted, he used his arms to lever himself up and sat, hunched over, in the gloom.
Some listened, but how many understood? The question crept up through his unconscious, nibbled at his thoughts the way it always did, as he readied himself to leave every place he'd set foot in over the last twenty years. The Good News is shared, but how many believe?
As it always did, the question dragged along its own answer: Not enough.
Not enough to make it worth the effort.
"Ah, God," he sighed into hands cupped over his face and tried not to weep. This journey had gone on twenty years now and what had it accomplished? No matter where he went, no matter how enthusiastic some of the locals seemed to be, he was never safe for long. He was harrowed from place to place, never truly getting rest, but always moving on before the blisters had healed.
When he did get somewhere, it was always the same -- walking through the marketplaces, speaking wherever a sympathetic crowd might gather... going to the synagogues and temples to reach out to the less sympathetic ears. Even his meals lacked peace for he was usually at the home of some neophyte or just someone who was curious, so he still had to be at work, explaining the words of the Master, telling of his own experiences, and trying to find the way to that person's heart.
In the end -- always the word that the authorities were coming to arrest him or that angry unbelievers were going to find him and exact punishment for challenging their ignorance. Either way, the outcome was the same: He would leave in the middle of the night, sometimes smuggled out of town, more often just walking out in the darkness, putting stadia between himself and the unbelievers.
And then on to the next town.
"It's not fair," he murmured.
"What's not fair?"
The voice startled him, but he was too tired to react. Instead, he just cast a glance to his side, at the person standing near him. He didn't recognize the face -- as much as he could see it in the weirdly shifting lamp light -- but the voice was vaguely familiar... was it one of the handful of people who had welcomed him to this place or one of the new believers? "Oh. I didn't hear you come in," he responded simply.
"You said it's not fair," the voice prompted.
The Teacher sat up, stretched to get the kinks out of his back, and shook his head slowly. "Just the ramblings of an old man," he answered, reaching out with both arms, stretching them wide.
"Did you not sleep well?"
The Teacher sighed. "I never do when I know I'm going to travel the next day. I don't sleep soundly."
"That's too bad. Perhaps it would be better if you didn't know?"
The Teacher's answering chuckle was more cynical than amused. "Then I don't sleep, wondering if I'm going to have to wake up suddenly to flee."
"I see. And that's not fair."
The Teacher shook his head. "That's not it. I said it's not fair, because --" He hesitated. Why share this burden with a stranger, particularly if he was a new believer? Because he asked -- the answer was almost audible. "This is what I'm saying. It's been over twenty years since the Master left us to return to the Father. Before he left, he told us that we must share the Good News of his resurrection with the rest of the world and make disciples of all nations."
"Yes, I recall hearing you say that."
"Twenty years. Twenty years I have been trying to do this thing. All of us, but I rarely hear from the others, now. For twenty years we have walked this earth, from town to town, we have preached from temple to temple, trying to bring people to Jesus. For twenty years I have walked just ahead of the authorities, just barely staying out of their hands -- sometimes, not even. For twenty years, my life has been traveling, preaching, and traveling again. I have not had a good night's rest in twenty years, nor went a whole week with a full belly."
Everything that burned inside of him was spilling out, now, and he wanted to stop but couldn't. "I've given up my family. I've given up comfort. I've given up rest. All in the name of trying to do this great work I have traveled tens of thousands of stadia with never a day's real rest, because I'm always thinking about where I must go next or what I must do. I've traveled more than any merchant, any soldier, and to what end? I've not seen even a tenth of the world. And I know I will never see these people again -- I will never know if I've done any good." He shook his head. "The journey is long and hard, and I fear it breaks my soul. So how can that be fair?"
There was a long silence and then the stranger laid a hand on the Teacher's shoulder and said gently, "Perhaps it is too long, my friend. As I recall, from Gabbatha to Golgotha was less than three stadia."
That voice! Suddenly the Teacher knew why he recognized it and without thought he was on his feet, aches and pains forgotten, turning toward the newcomer -- but there was only shadow. He stood alone in the darkened room, blinking, trying to turn time back to recapture the voice he had heard... but it was gone. After a time of silence, he shook his head, sat down, and reached for his sandals. As he laced them snugly against calloused feet, his heart was suddenly light and the ache in his bones was fading.
Perhaps the journey was not so long after all...
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children.
"God, Faith, and Science Fairs" by Craig Kelly
"The Road Much Traveled" by Keith Hewitt
* * * * * * * *
God, Faith, and Science Fairs
by Craig Kelly
Genesis 1:1--2:4a
I slowly began making my way through the makeshift pathways in the gymnasium. The whole room was abuzz with high school students running here and there, getting last-minute items for their displays, making sure everything looked just right. I could hear a couple of "Aw man!"s and "Oh no!"s echo in the room. Apparently, some of the students' displays weren't working the way they had hoped.
Wherever I have lived, I have always tried to make an effort to go to the local high school science fair. Over the years, I guess I'd seen a little of everything -- from the underachievers who had two scrawny, half-dead pea plants for their display to the future MIT graduates who came up with some new fuel alternative by using old banana peels. You never knew what you were going to get.
As the day began, I started walking through and take a closer look at each project, listening to the students run through their spiel about how each project worked. I have to admit, some of them were pretty blasé, but there were a few that caught my eye.
In one experiment, a student took an empty 2-liter Dr. Pepper bottle, and using a piece of thread, an index card, a mirror spot, and a bar magnet, he was able to make his own magnetometer to detect changes in the magnetic field within the room. He told me that because of violent events in our sun's corona, clouds of plasma are shot out of the sun, causing magnetic storms that can momentarily alter the magnetic field on earth. It was a fascinating look at how our sun, burning tens of millions of miles away, can affect earth in ways we don't realize.
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night.
Some time later, I came across a young woman who had been experimenting with nitrogen and its effect on soil and plant growth. She found that by injecting a richer nitrogen solution into the soil, plants were able to yield a 15-20% larger crop.
And God said, "Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth." And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
I smiled as I continued to look at the various projects. Each one had its own take on various parts of creation. Some dealt with biology, others physics or chemistry, others mechanics and technology. It was a fascinating afternoon of scientific discovery. Everyone had something to contribute.
One of the last displays I saw was a young woman, and all she had at her display was a microscope and a laptop. As she began to explain her project, I was captivated. By taking samples of certain protein molecules from muscle tissue, she was able to show how the cell broke down into its individual components, even going so far as to make a computer model of the DNA molecule. She then went on to explain how the DNA molecule worked, how it was akin to a vastly complex computer program determining how every organism developed. It was so complex that it took years for scientists to finally get the sequence of chemicals present in our own DNA. Her project explored the basic building blocks of life itself, from plant life to humanity. Every sequence in human DNA was specifically made to make us who we are.
Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
As I was finishing up my tour of the science fair, the school principal walked up beside me. He was a short man in his late 50s with graying hair and a large waistline.
"Excuse me, you're the new minister at the Lutheran church across town, right?"
"Yes, that's correct," I replied. "Thomas Groves."
"Roger Carduff. Pleasure to meet you." After a few more pleasantries, he asked me how I enjoyed the fair.
"Oh, it was wonderful!" I replied. "You have an amazing group of students here."
"Thank you," Carduff replied with a smile. "We take a great deal of pride in them. I must say, I'm curious. We don't see a lot of clergy at events like this. A lot of people would even go so far as to say that science and religion are like oil and water. May I ask what prompted you to come here today?"
I looked around again at the various projects around me, how each one probed into the wonder of God's creation.
"Honestly, Principal Carduff," I said, "coming here is good for my faith."
Craig Kelly writes copy for CSS Publishing Company in Lima, Ohio.
The Road Much Traveled
by Keith Hewitt
Matthew 28:16-20
Wakefulness came with a knock on the door and a muffled voice saying, "We leave soon, Teacher. The moon has nearly set and we want to be on the road before the sun rises." The door opened, then -- just wide enough for a head to be thrust through; the face was monstrous, a thing of moving shadows lit from below by a flickering lamp. Pale orbs appeared in the shadows -- eyes, peering in but not seeing beyond the island of light carved out by the lamp.
"Are you ready, Teacher?" the face asked -- clearer, now that there was no door between it and the man who had been tossing fitfully on the low palette in the corner.
"I will be," the man answered, without sitting up.
"Very well," the face said hesitantly -- paused, as if about to say something else, then just set the lamp on a table next to the door and disappeared. The door closed with a solid clunk.
The man addressed as "Teacher" lay still on the palette and stared at the play of light and shadow on the low ceiling. The light cast by a single small flame wasn't much but to eyes that had spent a night -- well, half a night -- in total darkness, it was bright enough. The gloom that it cast matched the shroud over his soul.
Again.
It had been -- what? A week? Ten days? Whatever. It had been a four day walk from that last hamlet, he knew that for sure. Nearly a thousand stadia with each step grinding off a little more skin from the soles of his feet. His knees ached with the memory and his feet burned even as he lay there, as though he were already marching once more.
He had found people to listen, at this place -- what was it called? He raised his hands, wiped sleep-sand out of his eyes and tried to remember. Names of towns and villages tumbled through his mind and slipped through the loose net of memory... he could not recall where he was. Fingers rubbed harder, pressed against his eyes as though they might somehow force out an answer, but it wasn't there.
One might as well squeeze a rock and hope for water.
Who do you think you are, Moses? The Teacher smiled grimly in the darkness and lowered his hands to his side again, used them to hold himself in check while he slid his legs off the palette stiffly, and let his feet drop to the cold stone floor. Feet planted, he used his arms to lever himself up and sat, hunched over, in the gloom.
Some listened, but how many understood? The question crept up through his unconscious, nibbled at his thoughts the way it always did, as he readied himself to leave every place he'd set foot in over the last twenty years. The Good News is shared, but how many believe?
As it always did, the question dragged along its own answer: Not enough.
Not enough to make it worth the effort.
"Ah, God," he sighed into hands cupped over his face and tried not to weep. This journey had gone on twenty years now and what had it accomplished? No matter where he went, no matter how enthusiastic some of the locals seemed to be, he was never safe for long. He was harrowed from place to place, never truly getting rest, but always moving on before the blisters had healed.
When he did get somewhere, it was always the same -- walking through the marketplaces, speaking wherever a sympathetic crowd might gather... going to the synagogues and temples to reach out to the less sympathetic ears. Even his meals lacked peace for he was usually at the home of some neophyte or just someone who was curious, so he still had to be at work, explaining the words of the Master, telling of his own experiences, and trying to find the way to that person's heart.
In the end -- always the word that the authorities were coming to arrest him or that angry unbelievers were going to find him and exact punishment for challenging their ignorance. Either way, the outcome was the same: He would leave in the middle of the night, sometimes smuggled out of town, more often just walking out in the darkness, putting stadia between himself and the unbelievers.
And then on to the next town.
"It's not fair," he murmured.
"What's not fair?"
The voice startled him, but he was too tired to react. Instead, he just cast a glance to his side, at the person standing near him. He didn't recognize the face -- as much as he could see it in the weirdly shifting lamp light -- but the voice was vaguely familiar... was it one of the handful of people who had welcomed him to this place or one of the new believers? "Oh. I didn't hear you come in," he responded simply.
"You said it's not fair," the voice prompted.
The Teacher sat up, stretched to get the kinks out of his back, and shook his head slowly. "Just the ramblings of an old man," he answered, reaching out with both arms, stretching them wide.
"Did you not sleep well?"
The Teacher sighed. "I never do when I know I'm going to travel the next day. I don't sleep soundly."
"That's too bad. Perhaps it would be better if you didn't know?"
The Teacher's answering chuckle was more cynical than amused. "Then I don't sleep, wondering if I'm going to have to wake up suddenly to flee."
"I see. And that's not fair."
The Teacher shook his head. "That's not it. I said it's not fair, because --" He hesitated. Why share this burden with a stranger, particularly if he was a new believer? Because he asked -- the answer was almost audible. "This is what I'm saying. It's been over twenty years since the Master left us to return to the Father. Before he left, he told us that we must share the Good News of his resurrection with the rest of the world and make disciples of all nations."
"Yes, I recall hearing you say that."
"Twenty years. Twenty years I have been trying to do this thing. All of us, but I rarely hear from the others, now. For twenty years we have walked this earth, from town to town, we have preached from temple to temple, trying to bring people to Jesus. For twenty years I have walked just ahead of the authorities, just barely staying out of their hands -- sometimes, not even. For twenty years, my life has been traveling, preaching, and traveling again. I have not had a good night's rest in twenty years, nor went a whole week with a full belly."
Everything that burned inside of him was spilling out, now, and he wanted to stop but couldn't. "I've given up my family. I've given up comfort. I've given up rest. All in the name of trying to do this great work I have traveled tens of thousands of stadia with never a day's real rest, because I'm always thinking about where I must go next or what I must do. I've traveled more than any merchant, any soldier, and to what end? I've not seen even a tenth of the world. And I know I will never see these people again -- I will never know if I've done any good." He shook his head. "The journey is long and hard, and I fear it breaks my soul. So how can that be fair?"
There was a long silence and then the stranger laid a hand on the Teacher's shoulder and said gently, "Perhaps it is too long, my friend. As I recall, from Gabbatha to Golgotha was less than three stadia."
That voice! Suddenly the Teacher knew why he recognized it and without thought he was on his feet, aches and pains forgotten, turning toward the newcomer -- but there was only shadow. He stood alone in the darkened room, blinking, trying to turn time back to recapture the voice he had heard... but it was gone. After a time of silence, he shook his head, sat down, and reached for his sandals. As he laced them snugly against calloused feet, his heart was suddenly light and the ache in his bones was fading.
Perhaps the journey was not so long after all...
Keith Hewitt is the author of two volumes of NaTiVity Dramas: Nontraditional Christmas Plays for All Ages (CSS). He is a lay speaker, co-youth leader, and former Sunday school teacher at Wilmot United Methodist Church in Wilmot, Wisconsin. He lives in southeastern Wisconsin with his wife and two children.
