The God particle

Yeah, that title caught my eye as well.

The March National Geographic arrived last week. The cover story is Inside Animal Minds, and there's a great shot of a border collie tipping her head to one side---her undoubtedly cold and wet nose ready for a kiss.

What caught my eye was the small print at the bottom of the cover---nestled in with Mega-projects in Iceland and The Pacific's Ancient Mariners were five words that got my attention; Search for the God Particle.

Upon arriving at page 90, I found a picture of what is called the Large Hadron Collider. It's a gigantic contraption built 300 feet below the surface of the border region of France and Switzerland. It's a circular tunnel 17 miles in circumference. It is expensive---the figures are murky, but best estimates put it between five and ten billion dollars. Billion with a B.

Still with me? Good, but hold on tight because this is going to be a bumpy ride.

It's a particle accelerator. The purpose is to make beams of particles race in opposite directions to later collide at nearly the speed of light. The scientists are interested in what comes from the collisions---the author of the article summed it up "The purpose of the LHC is simple but ambitious: to crack the code of the physical world; to figure out what the universe if made of."

Physicists hope to find what is sometimes called the God Particle. It's more commonly called the Higgs Bosun (named for the guy who theorized this 40 years ago). This is where it got a little wobbly for me and I started to feel like I was in 5th grade. The article began to appear to be written in some sort of language I couldn't understand. Forrest Gump's voice broke through my consciousness and said "I am not a smart man".

As near as I can determine---they figure the Higgs Bosun is the type of energy that was the initial source of what some call The Big Bang. They really want to find out how it was that all matter in the universe---that had no dimension at all at one time---grew to what we now know.

I respect most science---I like that God created smart people who research, discover, explore, and question. We've been given great gifts with our minds---we've created art and culture and beautiful things. Yes, we've also messed it up in a number of areas but humankind needs to receive some props for when we do it right. The human being is a pretty nice little creation and it must please God to see some of the wonderful things that we've done with our gifts.

But I'll tell you this---I don't think we're supposed to be able to figure a lot of this stuff out. I occasionally wonder just how He did it---made everything just.......be here. I don't engage in the new earth/old earth debate--I've got my opinion, but it's not a subject that we will ever really all be together on---so I usually just trust that the first week of heaven will be filled with all sorts of introductory lectures on all this stuff we used to get so worked up about and against. I believe that so much will be revealed to us upon arrival---that, besides the immense feeling of joy, we'll conclude that a lot of what we argued, fretted, protested, hollered, prayed, screamed, cried, stammered, and used precious time about wasn't anything that we needed to be doing.

In my 2nd year at Midwest Bible College, we'd enter some pretty interesting debates. The class was made up of a wide variety of people and we were never at a loss for lively conversation. The rulebook was the Bible, but many times Dr. Bowen would utter a phrase that was music to my ears (and anyone else who has shuddered when some Christians would harangue unfairly to make a point)----"we just don't have enough information about that".

No, I'm not advocating ending all funding for research and exploration---let's keep throwing spacecraft up above the earth as I believe that we were made with curious and intelligent minds. But let's not get all worked up about figuring out how this was done----and let's concentrate more on doing what Jesus really wanted us to do. To love each other.

Discover the God particle in you. It's there. It's what makes you genuinely concerned with your coworker or neighbor. It's what makes you hold your tongue when taken to task unfairly and unjustly, instead turning that cheek and loving your accuser. It's realizing that you are not fooling anyone by sitting in church on Sunday with only your body present---but not your heart and soul which is a million miles away thinking all the wrong things. You can write a check for a million bucks and plop it in the collection plate---but if your God particle is not at work inside you---it's like you put in a wooden nickel. In fact, the God particle equipped person who put in the only penny they will be far more blessed because their particle was sparking and crackling and not being still.

I don't have five to ten billion dollars to make my own particle accelerator. What I have is my daily devotional time, my fellowship with other believers, my prayer life, my church life---and the knowledge that on the day I asked---the God particle was placed in my heart.