God and The Big Bang Theory

I love doing the New York Times Monday crossword puzzle.  Mondays are my day off and afford me some leisure time to make a cup of coffee and sit down and concentrate on the puzzle.  Usually I am able to fill in the right letters for all the little boxes without too much angst.  Even when I am not completely sure, I will often put an answer down so that there are no blanks.  Somehow it looks neater to me that way.  Usually I start at the top of the puzzle, but if I am feeling a bit stymied, I will jump to the last clues and fill in the bottom right of the puzzle and work my way back to the beginning.   In the end, I love how the letters all come together to spell out words that are intertwined with each other.  In fact, I like most puzzles because it makes me feel as if I have some way to bring order to chaos.  For instance, when I begin a jigsaw puzzle, my table is covered with a bunch of irregularly shaped pieces with no meaning.  But once these pieces are connected, a whole picture emerges.

This past week, physicists have gotten closer to solving the puzzle of the Big Bang Theory and how the cosmos actually had a specific beginning.  It seems that there has been an unexpected discovery that showed evidence for inflation (a faster-than-the-speed-of-light expansion of our universe) and traces of gravity waves that prove that something or someone outside our universe caused our universe to be formed.  Atheist-turned-agnostic astronomer Fred Hoyle, who coined the term “Big Bang,” famously stated, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics."  For us Christians, we would proclaim that our loving God is solely responsible for our creation.  Perhaps one way to look at this amazing new discovery is to think of God deciding to intertwine all the necessary pieces to bring the puzzling chaos into the ordered and yet, mystical world that we know.

Another scientist said regarding this recent Big Bang discovery:  “As a modern believer and a scientist, when I look up at the sky on a clear starry night, I am reminded that “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1). I am in awe of the complexity of the physical world, and how all of its pieces fit together so perfectly and synergistically.”  As we continue on our Lenten journey let us take time to reconnect to all that God has created for us.  Now that spring has officially begun, we can begin to come out of our homes and see how perfectly the world begins its annual process of sprouting new life.  It will surely remind us that our time in the chaotic and uncertain wilderness is coming to an end and the empty “boxes” of our lives will once again be filled with the words that tell the story of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Mary Grace+