Thoughts on Einstein

You might as well not be alive if you're not in awe of God -- Albert Einstein

This does not sound like the Einstein I have heard and read stories about. My residence in Princeton was quite near the home of Albert Einstein and as I walked to class I often looked up into the second-story window where he had an office. He was born in Germany to non-practicing Jews and developed a respect for Christians after the second World War, stopping by Miller Chapel on the Princeton campus on occasion to tip his hat to the "only people who tried to protect my people during the holocaust."

I always thought Einstein was an atheist, but it turns out I was wrong.

He once described the human endeavor to understand God this way, "We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects." I like the mystery this image encompasses.

Pastors are often invited to speak about God with clarity and wisdom. Someone asked me today about the work of God in the midst of human pain. "Blah, blah, blah" I answered. All the while thinking, "While I can speak from some experience, most of this is my best guess, you know." An educated one (I will be paying on this brain of mine for awhile) and a reflected one, but my theology is dominated by hope rather than assurance.

Today while I cleaned and scrubbed and sanded a hardwood floor in the church with a group of fun girls (trying to fix up the parlor for meetings), hundreds of thousands of people sifted through rubble for people, for food, for some semblance of a life in Haiti.

Aaaah, Haiti. What will we do for you, so far away?

Awe and mystery and fear and sadness and hope. All of those seem just about right.