HOW BRITTLE THE THREAD

By: Travis W. Lewis

April 1, 2010

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By past description of his nature, he was an artist, architect, astronomer, engineer, social planner – true master of all the arts and sciences. And much more! Long before men and women were heralded for isolating the basic elements of matter, and ages prior to the ingenious arrangement of those elements into a periodic table, he understood their nature and relationship in every detail.

Countless centuries of toilsome research and experimentation have come and gone; and we still stand in awe at new discoveries, the minutest details of which have long been primer to Him. In his own form of laughter, he must have chuckled as the keenest of mortal minds sold their theories as facts, only to be disproved as higher levels of thought uncovered new layers of information that disproved the old. The cycle continues. The creature – mankind – still toils to comprehend the infinite handiwork of the Creator. Some question his very existence, and others brazenly contend that mankind is master himself, even the highest form of intelligence. Now and then, however, certain incidents remind us of both the fallibility of the creature and the omniscience of the Creator. If we should look – and learn – maybe such incidents could serve our quest to understand that there is a sovereign Master Creator, and, even in our finest hour, we are only the creature.

As an example, let’s rehearse Saturday morning, February 1, 2003, when within a five-minute period, I received an email from my grandson in Georgia and a phone call from my son, who was visiting in Nashville at the time. Both messages brought the same alarming news. For several minutes longer than normal, communications had been lost between NASA’s Mission Control and the space shuttle Columbia upon its reentry into the atmosphere of Earth. Within a few minutes, our fears proved to be reality. Actual pictures flashed across the TV screen confirmed that the shuttle had mysteriously broken up. Subsequently, it had apparently exploded almost forty miles above the earth as it streaked across the clear skies of Texas at twelve times the speed of sound.

Only minutes before, the icon of American science and space travel, along with one Israeli and six American astronauts, were headed toward a safe landing within the hour. Instead, within a few fleeting seconds, the most sophisticated flight machine ever crafted by mortals, along with seven of our brightest, most highly conditioned human minds and bodies, were obliterated. The same time frame that would have brought a smooth landing for the shuttle and happy hugs in family reunion for the astronauts offered the grizzly scene of men, women, and machine sprinkling the Texas countryside.

The scenes on that Saturday morning became even more grim as facts were assembled. The mystery grew more intense as we learned that NASA saw no signs of trouble until only a few minutes before the shuttle disintegrated. Only a few sensor reports of increased tire pressure hinted that trouble might be brewing. Even now, our best minds still marvel at why the problem went undetected until much too late.

I suppose that most of us went about our normal routine as that otherwise beautiful February day passed. Maybe, however, gripping as the incident surely was, it offered opportunity for each of us to reflect on some sobering facts. Mankind imagines, designs, and constructs incredible machines that allow us to accomplish tasks in an exponential fraction of time required only a few decades ago. Our inventions afford us the opportunity for accomplishments unheard of only a few years ago. So, before discounting out of hand the space shuttle loss as foolhardiness of space exploration, maybe we should remember that much of the technology we enjoy was spawned by space science itself.

The shuttle loss, however, might remind us that, when judgments and calculations of mankind challenge all the forces integrated into the creation of God, man often misjudges and miscalculates. We routinely place life and limb, along with machine and money, at stake with survival depending on the insight of man to wholly and accurately calculate and address the relative forces of God’s handiwork. And, sooner or later, even the most focused and highly trained human minds overlook something. Columbia was no exception.

We will continue our attempts to make our understanding more thorough, our calculations more intricate, and our forecasts more accurate. I suppose that since man first drew breath, he has stood in awe and has been driven by a desire to explore and understand all the forces of matter by which we are both sustained and limited. From the time he first stood at the edge of a river, man has yearned to see and understand what might be on the other side; or, since we first stood in awe on the shore of a great sea and observed its apparent farthest edge meeting the sky, we wondered what was just beyond that mystifying line. The vast expanse of the heavens is no exception.

And with each challenge, we set about to overcome the forces that formerly appeared to forbid our challenges. We have unraveled complex mysteries of chemistry, medicine, physics and other sciences alike. Our success has allowed us to overcome great obstacles and offered wonderful benefits to this and future generations. Yet our imperfections still allow the tragedy of Columbia. Perhaps one lesson of Columbia’s loss is that the sum of humankind’s knowledge and the keenest of our judgments remain but as an infinitely thin elementary textbook when compared to the master volume harbored with almighty God.

We will continue to review and reevaluate our experiences. We will revise our formulae and tweak our designs, then try again to understand His handiwork more thoroughly. Now and then, however, He seems to drop reminders of how brittle is the thread of human life, compared to the vast forces of His creation. And the reminder is often profound. We can be assured that the last day will dawn with the wise mind still in awe of His handiwork. And should the whole of what man has learned at last be written, the conclusion might truly be that “The half was never told.” Ω tl