Anyone have a spare $6.7 billion to spend exploring inner space? According to today's New York Times, a group of physicists have a deal for you. The International Linear Collider was proposed yesterday at a news conference in Beijing. The machine would be 20 miles long, created to slam together electrons and positrons. The result would theoretically recreate conditions when the universe was a trillionth of a second old.

This machine would require 13,000 person-years of labor to build. The device would utilize energies of 500 billion electron volts. The collider could later be extended to 31 miles and a trillion electron volts. The project is based on Einstein's equation of mass and energy. The more energy produced, the further back in time the experiment can go, closer and closer to the Big Bang. Or at least that's the theory.

I'm tempted to comment on the remarkable expense of time and money to tell us what we already knew: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). How did he begin? "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light" (v. 3). No Linear Collider needed.

But then another observation jostles for attention: the technological advances and sophistication we have developed in designing and one day constructing such a machine. I wouldn't know an electron from a positron if they introduced themselves to me. I don't even know how the laptop I'm using right now to confess my ignorance really works. Fortunately, the world is not limited by my limitations. The One who created the primordial event physicists long to explore also made physicists with the capacity for such exploration. The latter may be the greater miracle.

A millennia ago, King David somehow understood that fact when he said to his Maker: "It was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; I know that very well" (Psalm 139:13-14).

It has been observed that if our brains were simple enough for us to be able to understand them, we wouldn't be able to understand them. Lots of people comprehend the design of the computer you're using to read these words; no one really understands the design which enables you to do so. To see the most amazingly sophisticated part of God's creation, don't look at your screen, but in your mirror. And thank God that you have the ability to thank God. Why not right now?

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