A PRICELESS RECORD

            My last few blog entries beginning with An Awakening, speak of a very personal relationship with God.  I have found that God can be known, and it is a delight to know Him.  But is practicing the science of God confined to what I can learn by direct interaction with Him?  If others are practicing the science of God, then certainly I can learn from them, and I will be anxious to learn from them.  We are all getting to know the same God, and being the eternal, infinite God that He is, there is SO much to learn.

            As a scientist I do not work in a vacuum, alone and isolated in my lab.  This last week in a meeting with a few coworkers, someone made an observation about my experimental results that I had not thought of – it was a eureka moment.  In the last few days I have confirmed his observation, and it has led us to some new chemistry that is potentially very useful.  We work as a family, a team, a community of scientists, and that community is big.  There are hundreds of other chemists within our company that I interact with and learn from on a weekly basis, and there are thousands more in universities and other companies who also practice polymer chemistry.  I spend several hours each day learning from them by reading the scientific literature (articles, patents, and books), most of which is now available on the web.  And all of us are reading and building on the work of chemists who have practiced polymer chemistry in the past.  The scientific literature, current and historic, is a priceless record. 

            The science of chemistry as we know it has only been practiced for a few hundred years, but the science of God has been practiced for thousands of years.  As God revealed Himself to those who have come before us, they wrote down what they both heard and saw.  The literature of the science of God is compiled in the Bible.  It is a remarkable collection of works that include history, poetry, letters, and biographies.  More is being written about God every day, but the works contained in the Bible are unique in their authority.  God had something to say, and He made sure that it was said in a clear and complete form – for the sake of all of us who are practicing the science of God.  The Bible is a priceless record of the science of God.