A few years ago when my grandson Ben was only 3, we chatted while browsing my wedding album from 1973.
My engagement photo
ME: Do you know who that is?
BEN: Grandma.
ME: That’s right. Grandma when I was young.
BEN: Why you turn out not young anymore?
ME: That’s the same thing I’ve been wondering.
“Where has the time gone?” is just one of the many things I wonder about these days as my 70th birthday nears.
I wonder, too, about scientific things, because despite my father teaching high school biology, I find much of science mind-boggling—especially the fact that most of this world is invisible to us.
The only portion of the electromagnet spectrum that the human eye can detect is visible light, but we sure depend on the rest of those electromagnetic waves to get us through the day. Very long radio waves allow us not only to listen to the radio, but also watch TV, use the microwave, and talk on cell phones. And at the other end of the spectrum, short X-rays give us useful information about our health, while even shorter gamma rays make possible specialized radiation treatment.
And much of the world isn’t just invisible, it’s inaudible, too. The human ear only can hear a portion of sounds—those in the 2-20 kilohertz range. Dogs can hear much higher frequencies (up to 60KHz,) as can cats, who always pretend they can’t.
A 2016 CNN report described a dog named Lucy, who was kicked out of guide dog school because she was too distracted by odors. So her owners decided to take advantage of her sniffing prowess and train her to find malignancies. Lucy was reported to correctly sniff out cancer 95-percent of the time over a seven-year period.
Other dogs have accurately identified melanoma by sniffing moles and prostate cancer by taking a whiff of urine. (We already have CAT scans, why not DOG sniffs?)
And if you really want to blow your mind about the invisibility of our world, check out all the scientists and science writers who say what we can see is only a fraction of the whole universe. Most of them say the stars, planets and galaxies that can be seen make up only 2- to 4-percent of the universe. The remaining 96- to 98-percent can’t be seen, detected or even comprehended by astronomers!
Nature reminds us that what we see is not all there is.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
All of us truly are visibly “wasting away”—either from the effects of disease, or because you, like me, inevitably are closer to “turn out not young anymore.” Yet deep inside our invisible souls, God is able to renew and refresh.
And when we see Him one day face-to-face, the incredible joy, love, peace and glory awaiting all Christ-followers will make cancer and every one of earth’s trials seem like “light and momentary troubles.”
Don’t fix your eyes on what is seen. Don’t fix them on pathology reports, news headlines, statistics or anything else you can see. No matter what this life brings, fix your eyes on what is unseen.
Now may the LORD of peace himself give you his peace at all times and in every situation.
The LORD be with you all. 2 Thessalonians 3:16
Excerpted from Peace in the Face of Cancer, Lynn Eib ©2017.
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