By Kathy Klopman
I love to read. It started at an early age. The stories transported me to distant lands and different centuries. My imagination would run wild. One week I would be walking on the cobblestone streets of London in the 1860s, and the next I would be riding bareback in the Western Rockies. Many a night my dad would tell me to shut off my reading lamp and go to bed.
But there is one genre of story telling that never grabbed my attention in my youth: science fiction. It could be as basic as having a distaste for those two individual words. Science was never my strong suit in academia and fiction seemed like a colossal waste of time when there are plenty of gripping true tales to be told.
Lately though, I have been watching the “Doctor Who” series from BBC and “Stargate SGI.” Both storylines play around with the idea of time and space travel populated with plenty of bizarre super humans, robot machines and monsters toting around crazy gadgets. The universal theme of good versus evil overshadows every episode and the characters, whether flesh or metal, crave love and family relationships. It got me thinking about my future.
Scripture states in 1 Corinthians 2:9, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” I don’t know about you, but I get so excited when I ponder that promise of my future. John Piper in his thoughtful book The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in Future Grace sums it up best by writing, “But if you find, written on the tablet of your heart, the truth that there is a Creator, and that you are created to have a relationship with him, and that what separates you from whales and dolphins and chimpanzees is not mutations and chemicals, but personhood in the image of God, then you will probably lie awake at night and think about eternity. Because, as Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has set eternity in their heart” (page 353).
That describes me. Every time I step into the ocean to snorkel, my eyes feast upon some preciously unseen creature fashioned by the same hand that created me. Why did He bother to paint only the fins of one fish an electric purple or splash neon aqua polka dots all over another? There are over 2000 tropical Pacific species in my reef fish identification book. The combinations of color, shape and size are staggering. And the coral that they hide and feed on is equally amazing. Oh, and in His infinite wisdom He hid all of this from man’s obvious sight.
We are blessed to live in an age that enables us to witness much of God’s spectacular creation. Hubble telescopes bridge the vastness of space and bring us closer to the starry canopy that He knows intimately by name. Internet communication allows real time photos and videos of marvelous sights and sounds that occur around the world every minute of every day. We can truly be armchair world travelers, which probably would be labeled science fiction to a person living in the 1st century.
I am in total wonder and awe of the world we live in and become downright giddy when I ponder that God has more surprises in store for me. Wishful thinking, fairy tales or science fiction it is not. Holy reverence, awestruck wonder and joyful surrender it is. Spread the Word and worship the Creator.
Kathy serves as an assitant to administration and branch care facilitator.