the ant

I could hear the wind against the side of the house as the late December night pressed cold Minnesota fingers onto the windows. The bedtime story was over and I sighed as I clicked off the lamp, leaving the wall tenderly bathed in the glow of a nightlight. A gust rattled the glass as I gazed out on the moonlit yard below this cozy room. The girl snuggled further under the blankets as I brushed aside her silky hair and planted a kiss on her cheek. The simplicity of this young life suddenly called to me and I longed to snuggle under covers and dream even as I knew I must return to the illuminated rooms of the main floor and embrace tasks that would take me long into the cold night.

"Dad— I have just one question."

These were famous words from a curious daughter always longing to extend "good night" into a lingering conversation. Instead of preempting further words with music from her compact disc player and slipping into the dark hall, something gave me patience.

"What's that, sweetheart?" I sat on the edge of the bed, her silhouette faint upon the pillow.

"Where is heaven?"

Her words hung in the air like breath on a still winter night. As if interested in the question, the gale outside paused for a moment allowing the words to hang there.

"Maybe heaven is all around us—maybe right here" I replied after a moment. The girl had heard many stories of heaven, and her imagination had been taught to accept that wondrous places exist beyond our immediate world. It was time for her to seek such places.

"What do you mean—how can heaven be here?" she replied quietly.

"Sweetheart, there may be many places and times that we can't understand because we have been made to know only about the three dimensions of our world and about time running one way. God isn't limited to this space and this time. Math tells us there could be other kinds of space besides what we know, and that other space could be right here with us."

"Right here with us…" her voice trailed off as she repeated the words. "So God would see both kinds of space at the same time, even though we can only see one?"

"Maybe. I sometimes think that God doesn't even live in time like we do" I said. "He can choose to enter time, like when he shared himself with us as Jesus, but I think he knew the whole story of our universe before he even began it. To him, maybe yesterday, today, and tomorrow are all today."

"Or all yesterday…" she added, quietly.

"That's right, sweetheart. I think that's why God tells us that his special name is just 'I AM.' It makes me feel good to think that God knew everything about this universe and how it would turn out before he chose to make it. That means it must have a really happy ending."

"But what about all the bad things that happen—how can there still be a happy ending?"

"Somehow. I think he built our universe to tell a story that is too beautiful not to tell. Only we can't really see much of the story from this world, so we don't understand how beautiful it is, and how beautiful it will be. And we don't know much about heaven."

The wind hissed along the wall and the girl pulled the covers closer to her.

"How can bad things be part of something beautiful?"

"I don't know, but I have ideas." I rose and walked over to the window. I could just make out the small trees tossed and swaying in the wind of the yard below. "Do you remember that huge map we walked across last summer in Oslo?" I asked, referring to a vast world map display we had visited during a family trip to Norway.

"The map of the whole world that we could stand on?"

"Yes, that one. Do you remember that it was so big it took awhile to walk all the way across the world? Do you remember how each country was marked and how the oceans and land were different colors?"

"I remember."

"Think what it would be like to be a tiny bug walking across that huge flat map of the earth."

"You mean like an ant?"

"Yes. Imagine being an ant walking across that huge flat map. What would it seem like?" I asked. I could see her sit up slowly in the bed.

"All the ant would be able to see is that the colors sometimes change, but it wouldn't understand the map. It might not know where it was."

"Do you think it would even understand that it was walking on a map?"

"No." She sat silently.

"As the ant walked across the huge map, all it would understand is that the colors sometimes change. It wouldn't know much else."

"Maybe the colors would seem happy or sad for the ant." she said.

That insight caught me completely by surprise.

"Exactly. Just like we have happy and sad days, and the things of this world look like a mixture of happy and sad."

"So we're like the ant, and the good and bad things and happy and sad things might be like colors that make a picture too big for us to see." She looked past me out the window. "But do you think it's a picture God can see?" she added after a moment.

"I think it's even more amazing than that." I said softly, and sat next to her, holding her small hand. "If the ant couldn't even understand that it was walking across a beautiful, colorful map of the world, it could never even try to understand that the flat map was actually just a picture of something real that is much bigger and more beautiful."

"Our whole world…"

"Yes."

"And we're like the ant."

"Yes."

I kissed her gently and as she lay her head onto the pillow, I could barely see her smile.

"Thank you for talking to me, Dad."

"I love you" I replied. As I turned, I could swear that I heard my words echoed in the wild wind outside.


12.29.02

the clipboard

“Now, shouldn’t that six be in the ten millions place?” I asked her, looking across the kitchen counter at the math worksheet. It was a bit crumpled, and the counter was lightly seasoned with eraser dust from quite a few corrections. I felt like it had been yesterday that the little girl was learning to read and to do simple addition. Now this fourth grader with her sparkling blue eyes and pony tail was busy comparing 9-digit numbers and dreaming of finished homework so she could log on to her instant messenger service.

As she spent a moment considering the next problem, I found myself daydreaming about her future—imagining how I would react to the first handshake with the boy that would someday become my son-in-law, and wondering where one of my kids ever got such a beautiful face.

“Dad, how do you do this one?” she asked, interrupting my time travel as she poked a well-worn eraser at a more complex problem further down the page.

I instinctively reached for a pad of scrap paper in my open briefcase so that I could illustrate the calculation. I almost always had my old clipboard in my case—I keep a pad of paper on it. I tore off what turned out to be the last sheet, and as I unclipped the spent cardboard backing to throw it away, I made a modest archeological discovery that changed my evening.

There beneath the scratch pad was a small stack of old papers that I had always kept behind the pad. Out of laziness I had habitually replaced the scratch pad each time without discarding the old collection beneath. For some reason those pages caught my attention that night. As my daughter continued work without me, I began thumbing through them, surprised to discover how old they had become.

At 42, what particularly caught my attention was a sampling of pages of technical scientific notes from a stage of my education at a California university in 1990—12 years earlier. A person has to be pretty lazy to unconsciously carry around extra 12-year-old sheets of paper. A few pages up in the chronology of my unexpected excavation was a photocopy that I didn’t immediately recall. It was a single page copied from a medical journal, and across the top was the title “Standard Anatomical Measures in Early Human Development." Circled in red in a table of data were figures labeled “brain ventricle measurements." I had dated the page August, 1993—a month before the birth of this charming young mathematician who was now counting decimal points and commas across from me.

A sense of realization swept over me as I recalled this sheet of paper, and the anxious afternoon in the medical library when I had originally found it.

Like thousands of parents expecting a perfect baby, my wife and I had found ourselves disoriented 9 years earlier when a routine ultrasound scan revealed mildly enlarged brain ventricle fluid within the head of our unborn daughter. The doctor had been matter-of-fact.

“When we see this kind of abnormality, it causes concern about future cognitive development and potential.”

I had remained numbly next to my wife in the darkened exam room, trying to figure out what I was supposed to say. My wife broke the silence—

“How soon would we know if this child actually has problems?” She then glanced at me questioningly. The doctor quickly stated that deficits were usually obvious by kindergarten, if they were going to occur.

That conversation had spawned a mad dash to the medical library—a dash so many moms and dads make one way or the other when they are given uncertain and chilling news. Today it’s usually a dash to the Internet. At the time we were mortified. I had forgotten the anguished prayers, the silent glances, the attempts at reassurance.
How soon we forget the dark times when the sun is shining. How often I wonder what I would do if any of the threatened tragedies in my life ever actually came true. It may have been a specific and gracious answer to prayer, or it may have been a normal variation inside our daughter’s skull, but whatever it had been, a normal baby girl was born September 16, 1993. I still recall cleaning up the lubricant residue from her silky hair after a follow-up brain ultrasound scan as she spent her first night outside of mom’s tummy.

Life and diaper changes and getting big sister to pre-school and a thousand other things quickly got into the way of our remembering to give thanks to God that the heart-wrenching concern had evaporated. This nine-year-old photocopy brought those days back to me, and I remembered that frantic feeling—“what if there is really something wrong with her?”

She was humming quietly now, as she finished her calculations. I looked at her with a depth of love that caught me by surprise. O how I cherish the life of this young lady, I realized. I knew then that I would have cherished her just the same regardless of whatever challenges had been placed in front of us. At the same time, as I held that old photocopy from an old medical text, I prayed a prayer of thanks that I should have been praying every day— every minute.


9.26.02

a journey to faith

Good Morning. With me, you never know what you're going to get. I'm a scientist and I love talking about science. I'm a musician and I love talking about music. I love talking about my family. I've had cancer for the past 25 years and I like talking about living with cancer. I like talking about our "Imagine a place..." campaign.

But today I'm not going to talk about any of these things. Instead, I'm going to tell you a short story that is the most important story I could possibly tell you. This is the story of how I became a Christian. I will use some images from my home town, Madison, Wisconsin, to help you understand some important aspects of my youth. I took these pictures when I was home at Easter, knowing that they would help me tell this story.

(exterior image of a church building in wooded setting).

I was raised in a religious family. This is the church where I attended every Sunday while I grew up. It is a beautiful building. I was baptized and involved in all possible aspects of church life as a young person—singing in the choir, serving as an alter boy, Christian education, catechism, and confirmation.

(image of church interior and alter).

As I grew up, this interior view of my church sanctuary was what influenced me greatly. Something about this beautiful stone alter affected me as I developed my own personal theology of how to relate to God. I decided God was worthy of great reverence.

(image of a pair of scales).

My personal view of God was based on this cartoon. Perhaps you have, or have had, this same theology. I believed that God was a great measurer of my worthiness, constantly observing my behavior. If I was good enough, God might grant my wishes and bless me. If I fell short, God would deny what I wanted, or perhaps punish me. My young life was lived in a kind of negotiation with God—me trying to get what I wanted by behaving well enough.

(image of exterior of a high school).

In 1978 my best friend and I were talking after basketball practice outside my high school in Madison, just about where this picture was taken. He knew I went to church a lot, and he had the nerve to ask me to describe my relationship to God, and he asked me to explain where Jesus Christ fit in. I told him that I had a simple relationship with God—I tried to do my best, and God rewarded me when I was good enough, or withheld his favors when I fell short. I explained that I didn't need to worry about Jesus, I had a direct relationship with God. Jesus was a great teacher who was tragically killed, and God raised him from the dead to solve that problem, but having a relationship with Jesus was something fanatics added to complicate Christianity.

My friend then shared with me a small booklet by Billy Graham that explained how the New Testament described a relationship with God. This booklet blew my mind. Over the coming few weeks I became aware of the fact that it painted a totally different picture of how a relationship with God is possible.

(diagram of "God" and "me", separated by huge chasm, labeled "Sin").

As I read, I learned that a direct relationship with God, as I sought, was simply impossible because of a huge and insurmountable obstacle—this chasm caused by my imperfection and God's perfect holiness. My errors, and evil ways make it impossible for me to relate directly to a holy God.

(image of a tiny bridge from "me" hanging hopelessly into the chasm).

All of my best efforts at living up to God's standards amounted to this pathetic little bridge—hopelessly falling short of solving the fundamental problem of reaching across this chasm to God. As I learned, I discovered that none of us can reach God by our behavior—the Bible teaches that all of us are imperfect and separated from God. As I read, I learned that even though no bridge I could ever build would reach God, there was a bridge between us—a bridge built from his side of the chasm to me.

(image of a cross labeled "sacrifice of Jesus" bridging the chasm from "God" to "me").

This bridge was created when God allowed the sacrifice of one perfect life, that of Jesus Christ, in the place of all of the imperfect lives that have ever lived—like yours and mine. This death was a kind of suicide, God himself paying the eternal debt of imperfection in my place. In a moment, I'll share with you the prayer I prayed that week in 1978 to ask Jesus Christ to be my savior.

I just wanted to mention something that I feel is very poignant. All those years growing up, I had focused my theology on the image of the stone alter at my church. But look at another view of the interior of my church. Here above the alter is the most amazing and haunting wooden sculpture of my Lord Jesus dying on the cross for me. It stuns me that every Sunday I looked at this symbol and never understood what it meant—why this person was hanging on the cross for me.

(image of exterior of another church).

I have come to realize that this problem with confusing symbols is not unique to my own upbringing. I was thinking about it recently after I went to a lovely concert at this beautiful church here in Rochester.

(interior image).

This is the sanctuary. Perhaps you have been to this church before. During the concert I was enjoying the message presented in words behind the alter.

(image of hanging iron sculpture).

Then during the concert I happened to look up and see this shocking iron sculpture hanging up near the ceiling above the alter. I looked at it for several minutes before I figured out what it was. Can you recognize it? It's a huge sculptural rendering of the crown of thorns my Lord wore for me as he suffered in my place. Isn't it magnificent? I know a young lady who attends that church and I asked her one day what she thought of the remarkable sculpture hanging over the alter there. She looked at me and said "what is that thing anyway?" It took me suddenly back to my own youth where I had completely missed the significance of a symbol that I had seen hundreds of times.

(Images of sculptures of dying Christ and crown of thorns from the two churches).

When I "Imagine a place..." I think about an environment where we are blessed by many beautiful symbols of Christianity. However, I also think about all the other people who, like me, could look at a symbol every week and fail to understand it. I "Imagine a place..." where we enjoy symbols, but also clearly explain them, and teach the biblical truths they represent.

As I close, I want to share the prayer that I prayed when I came to understand how it was that God wanted to relate to me, as explained in the Bible. Perhaps you have been visiting here many times, or maybe this is your first visit, and you have decided that it is time to find the relationship with God that you have been seeking. Please join me in prayer.

Dear heavenly Father, you know I have lived my life always trying to please you— trying to be good enough to earn your love. I now come to understand that this is impossible—I will never be good enough to come into relationship to you. All of my attempts have been hopeless, and I now give up trying. I have come to understand that YOU have built a bridge for ME through what Jesus did for me on the cross. I now turn from my path, and cross that bridge to you, as I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Please fill my life with your Holy Spirit, change me, and hold me as your child, both in this life and forever.

With all eyes closed in an attitude of prayer—what was helpful to me when I made the decision to pray this prayer was to make a gesture of affirmation, signifying that this was a special day of decision. So now, if you have prayed this prayer to become a Christian, please just raise your hand for a moment and then put it down—nobody is looking, this is between you and God. Thank you.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your indescribable gift. In Jesus' name, Amen.


4.30.02