The True
Discovery of God

True believers in God feel the joy of His discovery. So boundless is their happiness that they cannot but share it with others.

Most of the stars in the heavens are larger and more radiant than the sun and have been shining for billions of years without their reserves of thermal energy showing any signs of being exhausted. So how do stars produce such vast amounts of energy? It is a question finally answered by the Noble Prize-winning astrophysicist Hans Bethe (1906-2005) after many years of scientific study.

The day he made his great scientific discovery—he was with his wife in New Mexico. They were out in the desert at night, and the stars shone brightly on the vast open expanse. His wife, Rose, exclaimed over their exceptional brightness, and Bethe replied, “Do you realize, just now, you are standing next to the only human being who knows why they shine?”

What Hans Bethe knew was only part of the answer. Neither he nor any other astrophysicist can say, or will ever be able to say, why or how this carbon cycle comes to operate in stars at all. The crux of the matter is that some things cannot even be approached by men of science, for they belong to a realm far beyond the scope of their scientific findings. The truth lies in the domain of the Almighty— the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. God has invested the stars with a lustre that seems almost magical.

It is one of the ironies of our God-created existence that a scientist should be so emotionally demonstrative when he has discovered how some part of nature works, but not why, while the far greater discovery of God and His works should arouse in him no such feelings. True believers in God feel the joy of His discovery, and so boundless is their happiness that they cannot but share it with others. If in thinking of God and carry out religious duties, they experience no such sense of uplift, it simply means that the actual discovery of their Maker yet awaits them.