I’m filling in for Pastor Meehan this summer while he is on sabbatical leave, so this version comes from me, Gary Rueter, retired pastor. I continue to be intrigued by a quote I used in my sermon on June 25 by physicist Albert Einstein: "I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.

…“if we determine the universe is unfriendly then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly.

"If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning.

"But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.

“God does not play dice with the universe.”

So, what do we think, is the universe friendly or not? What’s your experience? I notice that Einstein did not give voice to the opinion that the universe is both friendly and unfriendly. The universe can be very friendly to human life and has allowed us to thrive, to multiply, to fill the earth with our species. But in other ways the universe can be unforgiving, as at the depths of the ocean where the five men in a submersible vehicle making a journey to the site of the Titanic remains were crushed by the unforgiving pressure of deep ocean water.

Nancy and I are at the one-year anniversary of the sudden death of a longtime dear friend in an auto accident in Colorado Springs, CO. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the universe was unforgiving, taking her life. The evidence from our natural observations is inconclusive. At times the universe seems friendly and at others unfriendly.

So, this is another instance where we must turn to the Scriptures and see what they reveal about the universe and its creator, God. The opening chapter declares in the midst of the creation of the universe that God saw what was made and “it was good.” At the end of the account, we even have: “it was very good.” In Psalm 103, my favorite, we sing a phrase that is repeated often in the Hebrew Bible: “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.”

And then the most well-known verse in the Bible declares: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son.” The Scriptures declare that the creator of the universe is a loving God who cares deeply for all his creatures. As our African American brothers and sisters have taught us: “God is good; All the Time” and “All the Time; God is Good.”

That perception does change the way we live. May we use our intuitions, our curiosities, and our technologies to better understand the universe and God’s revelation in the Scriptures so that we may live as images of the merciful and gracious God who created us and abounds in steadfast love.

You are loved.  Gary Rueter, PT Sabbatical Pastor