Have you ever noticed how much children resemble one or both of their parents?

Beginning in 1953, two men discovered the secret. James D. Watson & Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA using X-ray diffraction.

For years, biologists had wondered how the body was able to store and then transmit genetic information. It turned out to be much simpler than previously thought.

Two sugar-phosphate strands of nucleotides are bonded together by hydrogen molecules and twisted into a double helix structure. Then those two strands “unzip” to become two templates picking up amino acids which, when bonded into chains, become proteins.

As with the Bible, it’s so simple a child can understand it, and yet so deep, even the greatest of scientists cannot fully comprehend it.

“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands… Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” (Acts 17:22-31)

I grew up in the church where lots of people helped me lay a firm foundation of faith, but like most people, it just never clicked. I’ve heard it described as “filling one’s head without touching one’s heart.”

Then I went off to college and into biology and chemistry, becoming a medical chemist, and I still had more questions than answers.

Finally, I found myself, in the middle of the night, sitting in a little boat in the middle of Bayou Texar near Pensacola, Florida testing the pH, temperature, and visibility of the water. We were trying to discover the cause of a recent fish kill and suddenly I realized, God created the beauty all around me and, as we discovered, the silt from a construction site had ruined it.

I bowed my head and asked Jesus to move from my head into my heart, and he did.

Pastor’s viewpoint is written by Charles ‘Buddy’ Whatley, a retired United Methodist pastor serving Woodland & Bold Springs UMC and, with Mary Ella, a missionary to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.