Now, I feel like I'm going to be preaching to the choir. I was asked to talk a little bit related to what I did last year, but in the context of calling and vocation, specifically in the areas of science. And I'm going to be, I know, preaching to the choir to most of you.

Most of you have this perspective, but hopefully there'll be, this will be an example that will help strengthen your sense of calling and where you fit into the fields that you work and maybe give you a little bit more equipping to help encourage others that you're working with. What motivates this is this question, and I'm sure you get this kind of question too.

How can you reconcile living out your faith, your Christian faith, and work in the field of science or technology or engineering? And we all have experienced that. And I knew that question going into my NASA career, coming to faith in the late 80s, largely through the ministry of grace to you, like probably also as a shared experience with many of you.

I knew going into the NASA opportunity in 1996 that I would face that question, working in the area of science and being in faith. How can you reconcile the two because of this perception of conflict, right? And that perception is still very strong. Another talk I could give would address why that conflict exists, and I did a little bit of that last year, I think, but I won't have time today.

But we all have experienced that question. Now we get things like this, right? Which this comes in an example from the Webb Space Telescope. So a recent reach into the deep space, and we get questions about that, and of course we hear the billions of years of age and all of that, and we got the question of light, you know, the traveling of light, but at the same time we see these things and people are invoked in awe and wonder, right?

That's the response. And the farther we look, historically, the more we see. So it's a great platform to engage with the gospel. And I think the better question is this, what should inform our worldview regarding scientific endeavor in our work in science? And that's what I really want to address here, and again, I might be preaching to the choir, but hopefully this will help reinforce what many of you already know.

Another example from the Webb Space Telescope, just incredible beauty. The farther we look in distance, the more beauty we see. And actually you can go the other way, right? With a microscope, the farther we look in that direction, the more beauty, the more awe and wonder that's invoked, the more ordering, and I'm going to talk a little bit about that in a bit, that we see.

It's without end, and it gives us a glimpse of the concept of affinity. So just establishing the biblical worldview of our calling, I want to review some of the basic teachings of scripture that we need to consider. In the beginning, God created the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness covered everything, right?

That's the beginning of the creation account. Let there be light, and there was light. And I suggest that light is not just the visible light, that narrow spectrum that we see visibly, but it's all of energy. It's what energized God's creation. That's important for us to remember. This is a key part of the creation account.

And then this, God proceeded over six days to take what was void or empty, and he filled it in what was without form in space, time, structure, and place. And I use those words specifically. He ordered the filling. And I'm going to focus, perhaps, on the ordering of the filling of God's creation, and how it relates to our call and our work in science and technology and engineering.

Another example, and I'm going to come closer to earth here shortly, but I wanted to start out with the newest images from the web. Another aspect, though, that I want to focus on is the subjective aspect. Who are we? Let us make man in our image after our likeness, again from Genesis 1.

There's so much foundational in Genesis 1. We need to go back there all the time to strengthen the foundation of our understanding. So he made him in the likeness of God, male and female. He created them. We have to remind everybody of that nowadays. And he blessed them and named them man when they were created.

And he said, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth." And I highlighted the fruitfulness. We are to be fruitful in our endeavors, in our labors. We are to subdue the ordered creation that God gave to us and have dominion over it.

Key to our understanding, key to our worldview as we work in our areas of science. You've given him dominion over the work of his hands from Psalm 8. Now let's come a little closer to earth here. And here we have a wonderful picture of, and just to orient you, we've got the island of Cuba in the foreground here.

We've got the Southeast U.S. so you see the peninsula of Florida. You can see the Florida Keys sweeping out there. And you can see the Bahamas and the beautiful, beautiful coral reefs. Just to put that, when you look at that, what comes to mind from the scripture, from a biblical worldview?

Well, pulling from the oldest book in the Bible, Job, he stretches off the north over the void and hangs the earth on nothing. And as Monica said, there are no strings attached. He hangs the earth on nothing. And when you read that chapter, chapter 26, it's speaking of the majesty of God, but it's speaking from the perspective of being off the planet.

So it gives you a glimpse of how profound it was to me to have the opportunity to be off the planet and reflect on the truth of scripture with that perspective of viewing the planet. Another one of my favorite pictures that brings scripture to mind. This is what we call the Terminator, which is the line separating the night side of the earth from the dark side of the earth.

A very difficult thing to photograph because of the difference in the lighting condition and the aperture of the camera. But this is one of my favorite pictures trying to capture what we call the Terminator. In that same chapter of Job, he has inscribed a circle on the face of the waters at the boundary between light and darkness, perfectly describing from the vantage point of being off the planet of what we see off the planet, written in the oldest book of the Bible, which gives testimony to the inspiration of the Bible.

And I leave all of Job 26 as a homework assignment to you, and I'm going to give you a couple homework assignments in this talk. It is a profound chapter, and I just pulled out a couple of them, but it ends this way. Behold, this is but a glimpse.

This is but a whisper of who he is, the thunder of his power. Who can understand? And we know if we're familiar with the book of Job, it is a very humbling chapter as we consider our place before God in the witness of Job and also his friends. One of my favorite passages of scripture is Psalm 111.

And if you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. Psalm 111, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I will point out a few aspects of the psalm, and then we'll get to verse 2 there. First it's a psalm of a believer. In verse 1, he says, "I will give thanks to Yahweh with my whole heart in the company of the upright in the congregation." So it's a believer among believers.

It's a worshipful song. It's acknowledging the works of Yahweh, the work of his hands. And in the psalm, he rehearses the works of God in different ways. He rehearses his works of creation. He rehearses his works of provision. He talks about food. He talks about the goodness of his works.

He talks about the wondrous works that are remembered. He talks about the graciousness and the mercy of God in his works. All of that is through the understanding and through the lens provided in his work of redemption, which he acknowledges in verse 9. He sent redemption to his people.

He has commanded his covenant forever. That reminds me that in our worldview, as we approach the issues of science and technology and engineering, we can only understand it through the lens of Scripture, through his work of redemption. So we can only comprehend his works of, for example, his creation, his works of ordering his creation or the provision that we find in the order, his works of sustaining his creation, his works of providence in life that Jennifer gave witness to, trusting in that.

We can only comprehend and understand that through his work of redemption, which gives us the new heart, grants us wisdom, grants us understanding, grants us knowledge and all of that by grace. And that's another aspect that we have to remember as we give witness to those around us, as we work in our different fields, and it motivates us to not only give witness but to extend grace to those who are blind to these things, right?

So we can't convince, we can't persuade a non-believer to have this biblical worldview. All we can do is give witness to it, and it is God that will work in the heart as he chooses. The psalm ends, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All those who practice it have a good understanding." But back in verse 2, verse 2 is a profound verse when we have that biblical worldview.

This psalm was known as the scientist's psalm at one point in the 1800s. And I'll talk a little bit about that in a few minutes, a little bit more. But this was the verse that was central in the whole psalm that made it the scientist's psalm. "Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them." When we first read this, we might be tempted to think, okay, it is a psalm to command us to delight in God's works, or it is a psalm that commands us to study his works.

But if you look at the grammar, it's not a command at all. It's a description, right? The works of God are studied works, that describes the works. They are studied works, and the believers are delighting believers. So with a proper worldview in our approach, we delight in our work as we study the works of God.

It is a characteristic of us as believers. So those works declared great are studied works by delighting believers. And that includes his works of creation, provision, providence, and redemption, all understood, as I said, through his work of redemption. And as I said, that psalm became known as the scientist's psalm.

I'm not going to go into why the conflict exists, but I will remind us of the root of the conflict. And it's right there also in Genesis, in chapter 3, "Did God actually say?" And that's the root of all of the conflict that we experience, or we observe, or we get questioned about, "Did God actually say?" It's a rebellion against God.

And just one passage, also out of scripture, "In those days, there were no king in Israel. Every man did what was right in his own eyes," which is the closing verse in the Book of Judges. And it reflects our experience today. You know, we're all around us, we'll do what is right only in their own eyes.

By the way, that picture, any recognize that picture? Yeah, Dead Sea, Jordan River Valley, Sea of Galilee. There's a moonset. I'm going to spend a little bit more time here in the scriptures. In Job 28, in the middle of the chapter, it says, "But where shall wisdom be found?

Where is the place of understanding?" And I also give you Job 28 as homework. This is the pivotal verse in that chapter. In the first part of the chapter, it talks about two things, which are reflected in the verses that I rehearsed from Genesis 1. It talks about God's provision in the ordering of His creation.

And it puts it in the context of mining operations. And if you go read Job 28, it talks about there's a mine for silver, a mine for gold, ore is taken out of the mountain, food grows from the ground. So it's speaking of God's provision found in His creative work.

And it also says that man, mankind, does that. He goes to find it. He searches it out. He drills a hole in the mountain. And it acknowledges that no bird of prey can do it, doesn't even think about it. The lion doesn't do it, the king of the beast, but it's unique to man.

So it acknowledges two things. One is the rich provision of God's creative work. And then it acknowledges man's ability to go search it out, to find it, to consider, okay, what can I use this for, to develop it? So that gives the basis of the worldview of science, technology, engineering, industry, is that God-given ability of mankind to extract what He has provisioned, especially so in His creative work.

But then we have this key verse, "But where shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding?" And it goes through, we've heard a rumor of it, we know it's out there, wisdom, but we can't attain it. So it's one of those things, although we have such great capability to achieve things, to achieve technological achievements and other things, we have this great inherent capability given to all to go extract the provision.

There's one thing that's out of our reach, one thing that we cannot attain, one thing that we cannot achieve on our own, and that is the attainment of true wisdom. And I know we could go through discussions of wisdom, human wisdom and godly wisdom and whatnot. This is true wisdom.

This is wisdom revealed by God Himself, and that by grace. So it has to be revealed to us. And the chapter ends this way, "Behold the fear of the Lord." That is wisdom, "and to turn away from evil is understanding. It is by grace that we're granted true wisdom that informs our understanding of God's works of creation, provisioning His creation and His works of providence, as we've talked about.

So it's kind of key, it's fundamental to understanding the worldview in which we live out our vocations. And then this theme of wisdom, if you follow that and you go to Proverbs 8, "Whoever finds wisdom finds life." And what is it? What do we think about there? Well, the manifestation of wisdom is found in Christ, right?

So if we take the life theme there, we go to John 1, "All things were made through Jesus Christ." He is the creator of all things, "and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life." And again, I'm just giving you the thread through Scripture that becomes the foundation for a fuller understanding of our calling in our vocation.

I could go to 1 Corinthians 1, I don't have it on the slide, but that's where it talks about godly wisdom and human wisdom and the paradox there, apart from the grace of God, which grants us that understanding of Christ and the understanding of wisdom, as Paul writes in Colossians, in Christ in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

That's the thread of Scripture. That's the logic of Scripture that can provide our foundation for entering our vocations and working in our vocation. Now, when I get put on a slate to speak, everybody thinks they need to hear about space. So I'll give you a little bit of space.

Anybody here see a space shuttle launch? Okay, a couple of you. It was an amazing experience. The space shuttle on the launch pad weighed 4 million pounds. Most of that weight was the fuel and the oxygen, and it produced 7.5 million pounds of liftoff. And it lifted off at the very precise time to later rendezvous with the International Space Station, which was my experience and what I was dedicated to my entire career.

And you fired the rockets, not only at a certain point, but in a certain direction, a certain profile on ascent, fire the engine for a specific time, 8 minutes and 53 seconds, after which you were out of the atmosphere and accelerating to a speed of 17,500 miles an hour, which put you in orbit on a trajectory to later rendezvous about 46 hours and a few minutes later with the International Space Station.

All of those things were very precise, very predictable. We know that, actually we had a launch attempt this morning that got aborted, I don't know why, but it was going to the space station, they had a problem, I think that for some reason they scrubbed the launch, but it was a very precise time.

So I confess, I was actually back there during your talk with my little, on my iPhone, keeping track of the launch. But when it aborted, I got tuned back into your talk. But all of that is a demonstration of God's ordering of his creative work and mankind's ability to extract that order.

And of course, if those of you that experienced this, it was a very powerful thing to witness. Not only do we know the time and the direction and the duration and all of that to get the re, but think about all the work, all the detailed work it took to put it together and to build it and to get to a level of reliability where we had the confidence to actually light the torch on fire.

And of course, we've done it not without failure historically. So we are limited in our ability to do it, but yet we do it. The provision is there, and we have the ability to extract that provision. And this is the vantage point it brings you. I want to read you a couple of quotes, and I think I might have used this quote last year for those of you who were here, but I didn't have the words on the screen.

From the rocket, we shall see the huge sphere of the planet Earth, like phases of the moon. We shall see how the sphere rotates, and how within a few hours it shows all its sides successively. And we shall observe various points on the surface of the Earth for several minutes and from different sides very closely.

This picture is so majestic, attractive, and infinitely varied that I wish with all my soul that you and I could see it. This was written in 1911 by a gentleman who is known as the father of the Soviet space program, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. 1911. How is that possible? Well, it's possible.

He was a physicist. He was a theorist. So he, studying the ordered creation around him, he came up with this concept that today we take for granted, which gives a testimony to two things, the provision in God's creative work and mankind's ability. Here's a little bit later another quote, using material ferried up by rockets, it would be possible to construct a space station in orbit.

The station could be provided with living quarters, laboratories, and everything needed for the comfort of its crew who would be relieved and provisioned by a regular rocket service. Exactly describing my experience on the International Space Station over four flights, building the thing piece by piece, along with many others of course, in that international partnership and every few weeks having a supply ship show up that we'd have to unload and we would have everything that we would need.

That was written by a more familiar name to you, in 1945, who was an author of much science fiction. Again, building on the concepts that theoretically were possible, that we're seeing because of the observable mathematical ordering of God's creative work, gives testimony to the provision and testimony to God-given ability of those who bear his image.

And of course, this is the result and I could give another whole talk on this. It's an amazing achievement. I think hopefully it remains a humbling achievement and not one like the Tower of Babel, but resulted in the International Space Station, which still flies and the rocket that was going to launch this morning was destined to, and will be destined when they get off the pad, to the International Space Station, which has had continual human presence in orbit since the fall of 2000, so 23 and a half years.

And just to give you a little bit of scale, this is bigger than a football field, if you include the solar arrays out there. It orbits the Earth every 90 minutes. It's got a pressurized volume inside the equivalent of a 5,000 square foot house and currently we're operating with a crew of seven.

And it's got so many elements in it. Now imagine, we have to duplicate what God has provided here on Earth that is essentially our life support system. The atmosphere, the water cycle, everything that the creation provides for us to sustain our life. We have to duplicate it up there artificially, but yet we have the ability to do that.

History has shown that, to duplicate God's design in his creative work and have continual human presence for 23 and a half years. Here's our view out the window during the daytime and our view out the window at night. Just incredibly beautiful and an amazing place to go and appreciate the details of God's work in a very unique way.

Occasionally we get the opportunity to go outside. I call it the ultimate skydive. And I had the opportunity to do five of them and when you're outside on a spacewalk, you're outside for six and a half or seven hours. So and it takes about six hours just to prepare to go out the door.

But again, duplicated inside that spacesuit is everything needed to sustain your life. The oxygen debris, the carbon dioxide removal, the humidity removal, maintaining a temperature that is somewhat comfortable, but not endangering anyway. Again, given testimony to the provision of God's creative work and mankind's ability. Some spectacular things you see from that vantage point.

There's a sunset, just the edge of the sun disappearing over the horizon and you see the clouds that provide the shadows in front of the cloud. Or in terms of scientific discovery and whatnot, these are called noctilucent clouds where we would see occasionally over the north polar region during our summertime or the southern polar region during our wintertime.

We're on the night side of the earth looking up over the north polar region here where the atmosphere is backlit from the sun, which is on the other side of the earth, showing these very incredible, very curious formation of something. And the theory is there are ice crystals carried up very high in the atmosphere above the normal weather systems.

And of course, I would agree with the theory. That's probably a good theory. There are ice crystals carried up there, different layers of the atmosphere and mixed up by the different air currents, the jet streams and whatnot. But notice the repeating pattern. Notice the order, the mathematical order which this crowd appreciates.

It's evident there, it's evident everywhere. Or the beauty and the design and what is pleasing to the eye. Here's an example of coral reefs. These are the Bahama reefs that were part of that picture earlier. Or a close-up of the largest reef in the Bahamas. Here's some examples of what we can observe and the beauty.

And notice two things. One is the objective observation of what we see. But also our subjective response to that observation reflecting the image that we bear. In a bleak view of the Grand Canyon right after a snowstorm. A glacier in Pakistan. It all draws our attention, right? Draws our curiosity.

Sand dunes in the Sahara Desert. Sand dunes became one of my favorite subjects, if you will, to collect some pictures. Notice the mathematical ordering of these dunes, right? And we know that from, most of us from our work, we see mathematical ordering in everything. We know how, if you have a math background, you know how to mathematically describe some phenomena that we see in nature.

One of my favorite pictures to that effect is this one. These are also sand dunes in a different part of the Sahara Desert. But look at this. It's incredible. You see the orthogonal lines, the repeating patterns in both large-scale and small-scale. My favorite picture to show and to give an illustration to the mathematical ordering of God's creation.

And some of the areas that you all work, by the way, cosmos. What does it mean? It's order, right? As opposed to chaos. God's creative work is not chaos. He had ordered it and he filled it. And how did he order it? When we look, we see not only the order, we see the precision in that order.

I'll come back to that theme in a minute. We see beauty, elegance, simplicity, complexity, variety, harmony, symmetry. I would ask unity or add unity to that list, right? Unity and the complexity and the diversity. Some examples in our work, mathematics, trigonometry, geometry, calculus. Calculus, it took, I went through it three times.

I went through it undergraduate, went through it in graduate, and I went through it again in experimental test pilot school. The third time, I think I was finally getting it, right? But calculus just always amazed me how it could describe the phenomena that we observe in so many different ways, from basic calculus all the way to partial differential equations and all of that, everything in between, describing so much of what we see.

And we know that we can describe, we can model things so much with math, in physics, in chemistry. The periodic table is an obvious example that I give to many. It's amazing that the elements that have been discovered, and maybe there will be others discovered in the future, can be described with whole numbers in the order that is reflected in the periodic table.

Or I talk about optics a lot as well, very predictable. We go to the optometrist, we find that we need a correction in our vision. He can measure very precisely through the instruments what our correction is needed and then he prescribes a lens and we put them on and, whoa, the world is clear again, right?

And all the other things we do with optics, from telescopes to microscopes and everything in between, is a demonstration of the ordering of God's creative work. Or in biology, DNA and all of the things that have been learned in DNA and the incredible complexity, but the precision in the complexity of DNA as a basic information for life.

Or the cellular function. And we know from the history of, if you go back and trace the history of philosophies of, related to evolution, which goes all the way back at least to Greek mythology, you know, the cell was assumed to be simple, right, and then it evolved. But we know that the cell is an incredibly complex, incredibly ordered.

It's a, it's a, it's a machine with incredible complexity to it. Or an organism in itself, the human body, any kind of organism that if you take out one part of the organism, the organism can cease to exist, right? The irreducible complexity, as you heard that term, all of that is a demonstration of God's ordering.

Or for those, I'm speaking to a scientific-related crowd here, but oftentimes I speak to folks that don't like science, don't like math. I say, well, maybe you like music, and music is another demonstration, and I always pick on the guitar player, because I'll say, I'll say, I'll take that guitar, and I'll take that string, and we'll measure the tension on it, and we'll pluck it, and you tell me what note it, it plays, and then I'm going to take your string, and I'm going to cut it in half, and pull it to the same tension, and I'm going to pluck it again, what note is it going to play?

It's going to play the same note, right, an octave higher. So I use that as an illustration, just to show musicians that don't like science, the, the ordering God's creative work. Here's an oblique view of the sun reflecting in the ocean, and different layers of, of clouds and weather.

There's a lawfulness of nature that we're very familiar with, and it's intelligible, it's discoverable, it's immutable, it doesn't change. And there's a stunning provision in that lawful created order, and oftentimes I focus on this because when we think of provision, we think of the, the raw materials that we extract from the ground.

But the provision goes so much deeper than that, so much broader than that, in the, for example, the mathematical ordering that I touched on. God has granted our, an amazing ability to observe, contemplate, search, explore, discover, evaluate, develop, and utilize that provision. Those two things. He exists, and he's given us the, this ability, and this is common to everybody.

This is foundational to a biblical worldview of the work that many of us are in, and it also is foundational to us understanding and engaging in that work as a calling, as a vocation. We are called into that with these basic elements of our worldview. New York City, which is a great illustration of the history of humanity and the growth of technology and extracting from God's provision, even apart from his work of redemption in the hearts.

It's a, it's a common ability given to all mankind. There's a Puritan by the name of Stephen Charnock, perhaps you've heard the name. I found this quote when he was talking about the provision of God's creative work in great detail in that big volume, The Existence and Attributes of God.

All things in the world, he says, one way or another, center in the usefulness for man. Some to feed him, some to clothe him, some to delight him, some to instruct him, some to exercise his wit, is what it said originally, or you could say his intelligence, and others his strength.

So true in the work that we do as we go explore God's creative work, discover things, extract it, develop it, apply it, utilize it. It's the perspective that Charnock had, that he drew from the scripture. Science as we know means knowledge. It comes from the Latin. A classically understood scientific endeavor, and I'll get to the classical part where I'm drawn from in history, the searching out of knowledge to understand God's works, to discover and utilize the provision found in creation, and to develop that discovered science into technology for our good and for God's glory, right?

And that motivates us in our calling, in our engagement in this work. Scientific endeavor is a category of subduing God's ordered creation, going back to Genesis 1 in those verses that I reviewed at the beginning, and exercising dominion over it, and it contributes to be fruitful. Sometimes we say be fruitful and multiply, and we apply the fruitfulness to multiply and to reproduction, but it's broader than that.

It includes that, but it also includes these other endeavors. Fruitfulness in life and scientific endeavor certainly is a component of that. Psalm 111, verse 2, delighting in the studied works of God, and we are called to that work. So all of this is what is to inform our calling, our vocation in the areas of math and science and related.

Here's some examples from what I call the age of science. Sometimes this is called the scientific revolution. I prefer to call it the age of science. I might get to it why that is in a minute. If I don't get to it, remind me if we have time for Q&A, I'll come back to that.

But we all know these names, we all review these names, learn these names in undergraduate levels of math and science courses, engineering courses, Kepler in astronomy, Boyle in chemistry, Boyle's law, you learn that if you're a scuba diver or do anything related to scuba diving. Newton, of course, very familiar.

Euler, if you study math, Euler's equations, Faraday in electromagnetics, Pasteur, we all benefit from Pasteur's work with the milk in our refrigerator, right? That's why we call it, it's pasteurized, in his work in biology. Maxwell, one of my favorites in thermodynamics and electromagnetics, and Calvin, of course, in thermodynamics.

All of these and many more were theologians first. And they were driven in their science, answering the call that God had given them by their theology. And that should characterize us, right? If we don't understand biblically why we work and what we work in, then we need to endeavor to do that.

We need to endeavor and grow in our understanding of the biblical foundations in which calls us to our work, our vocation, like these guys. You don't read about their faith in any of the textbooks, right? But it's true. If you go, and nowadays with the internet, there's more research, more opportunity out there to access information.

But you'll find that these guys, maybe we don't agree with all their theology, all the specifics of their theology, but they were theologians first, driven by their understanding of what God had revealed and their understanding of their calling in their work of science. They lived by basic presuppositions in science, and those presuppositions included what we've been talking about.

There is a rational and knowable ordering in creation. It didn't arrange itself by chance, right? We know that. Everything is ordered. And I gave some examples in the different disciplines that we work in that demonstrate that order. And furthermore, there's a precision in that ordering. That's why we can launch a space shuttle at the exact second and fire the engine for a duration exactly, precisely, to get to an orbit.

That's very precise. That will then, in the trajectory, rendezvous and enable us to dock with an international space station going at that same precise, predictable speed at a place that's predictable well in advance because of the precision in the ordering. I believe, I've come to the conclusion that the precision in God's ordering work is infinite.

His work is infinitely precise. Even though we sometimes look and we see what is chaotic, in the trees, if you will, of the forest, there's a precision in the ordering. We're only limited by our ability to measure it. And that's very easily seen in history and the best illustration for that is the measurement of time, right?

Human progress has been directly proportional to the precision that we've been able to measure time. Nowadays, we take it for granted. All of us have a smart device probably in our pocket or a pocketbook. The only reason they work is because they're all synchronized at some few milliseconds and I don't know what the number is.

But it enables things like that. So there's a precision in the ordering and the progress made in scientific endeavor has increased the accuracy of measuring that precision, of finding it and measuring it. There's a lawful contingency. That was the third presupposition in science and that, what does that mean?

That means that the laws, what we call laws of nature or whatnot, the mathematical equations that we all take for granted are not written on a bumper sticker on creation, right? They have to be discovered. They have to be searched out. And the history of science has done that.

But that's a presupposition. There's a lawful contingency. What we see in God's creative work operates in an ordered way, that ordering is precise and it operates by laws that can be discovered and searched out and applied. That's a presupposition that informs our scientific endeavor in answering the call. Now, how can we tie this to scripture?

Well, I go to two verses. In Christ, all things are held together. That means they cohere. That's why we call it a universe. There's a coherence to it. There's a logic to it, but it's not obvious. We have to search it out. We have to find it. And that's the subduing, the dominion effort to search out what God has provisioned for us.

And it comes right there in Colossians chapter 1, or Hebrews chapter 1. He upholds the universe by the word of his power. And I love this because the word "uphold," translated "uphold," is related to the word in Colossians, but it's a different word. And it has an element of it, in addition, that suggests moving forward toward a goal, to fulfill a purpose.

So he upholds the universe by the word of his power, his work of sustaining his universe for an ultimate goal. And we can point, of course, to the new heavens and the new earth, ultimately, as the goal with our biblical worldview. But these were very important, very important for us in our presuppositions of science.

So we need to have presuppositions in science, and I believe these are a great place to start from a biblical worldview. Now, given this worldview, then, it's a good reminder for us all to consider our vocation, the areas that we work, our calling, our assignment. And in the interest of time, I'll give you those passages as homework as well.

1 Corinthians 7 and Colossians 4. We have a duty to answer the call that God has given us in life, right? It is our assignment in life, and that's what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians. In Colossians, Paul's given a reminder, "Hey, tell somebody to fulfill the ministry you've received in the Lord." So they're good reminders for us.

What are the elements of that? Well, it includes what I started out with. We view and comprehend this worldview perspective, our calling, our vocation through the lens of redemption. And, Jennifer, you gave a wonderful testimony for that in the answering of your call as in God's providence, he unfolded the details of your life.

So we need to always go back to that, always go back and reestablish, affirm, establish our understanding in those basic elements of a biblical worldview understood only because we've been granted by grace that wisdom, right? Which comes by the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and that's granted by grace.

That's his work of redemption. And only then can we begin to understand our calling, our vocation. It's recognized then as a gift of grace, unique to you, unique in your abilities, God-given abilities, and also your opportunities. It is a gift. The opportunity that you have to work out your vocation is a gift from the creator to you, uniquely, and we're all unique in this.

We're all uniquely placed in time, place, and circumstance with unique abilities and more important, unique opportunities. And those opportunities can be considered both a personal and a corporate outworking of providence. It's personal for each of us, and I think that's probably obvious to each of us. We can look at our lives and see how God has providentially orchestrated the circumstances of our life to equip us, to give us opportunities, to help us discern the path when we come to a fork in the road, to maybe open doors or close doors.

We see that personally. It's important also to see it corporately, right? Because we're not here for ourselves. We're here for the good of mankind and for the glory of God and to give witness to him. So in fact, there's a, not Charnock, but John Flavel, another Puritan, wrote The Mystery of Providence, which I read in the early '90s, the first time I think I've read it six times since then.

It really opened my eyes to see life in this perspective, that we are uniquely placed in time, place, and circumstance, and uniquely called to our labors in life, and we actually have a duty to see God's providential outworking in life and to acknowledge it and to give thanks for it and to accept it for our good, as was rehearsed in the earlier session, and to see it as both personal and corporate outworking of providence.

It's also a stewardship, and that's also been acknowledged. I am not by nature inclined to step into a limelight for public speaking or to attract attention. My inclination is I'd rather hide in the shadows, I'd rather just do my work and not be known and seen. But I recognized going into the NASA opportunity of the stewardship of life, and I recognized that that would bring unique opportunities or unique experiences that would draw attention.

So how was I going to react to the attention given? Was I going to go hide in the shadows, which would be my natural inclination, or would I steward them in a responsible way, and given the opportunities that the Lord has given me, give testimony to him? So that really summarizes that understanding of that stewardship, and the responsibility that comes with the calling that we're given by God summarizes the reason that I'm even here talking to you.

And each of us have that responsibility. Each of us have a stewardship of life, of opportunities, of abilities, of all the things that we engage with life. We are to steward that for the good of mankind around us and for the glory of God. It's fundamental to understanding calling.

And that all comes with, as was also witnessed to us so marvelously, with I would say a growing gratitude and anticipation, and with the motivation for God's glory and the good of others. So in biblical terms, then, we are all called to be scientists. And I'll tell this to everybody, those that aren't scientists.

If you understand this, and you go back to Psalm 111, verse 2, and it was called the Scientist's Psalm for that reason, in that sense, like Luther said, all Christians, all believers are theologians. They're to be students of God, right, to study God. In a similar way, we are all called to be scientists, to be delighting believers in the studied works of God.

So another way to say some of this is, we shouldn't ask ourselves what we are doing in this, but what is God doing in and through us? That's another important aspect of our understanding of our perspective. What is God doing through you, in you, and through you, and that then in part answers the call of what we are to steward.

The other thing is, it's often common for us, and maybe you've experienced this, to be driven, right, in your work. We're not to be driven, we're to be called. There's a difference. I moved to Washington State three years ago, and we arrived on election day, when Biden won the election, and everybody was distraught, and shortly after that, people were leaving and moving to Florida and moving to Texas, and I said, "Don't run away," and they'd say to us, "Why'd you move to Washington, this liberal state?

It'd be like moving to California. Who wants to go there?" They were being driven away. I felt we were being called up there, right? We can fall victim to that. We can be driven in our profession, but we're to be called. Those driven toward satisfaction will be found dissatisfied, is a quote I found.

Those called are called toward anticipation, right? We can anticipate what God has in store when we're answering the call and not being driven by achievement or goals. Science is to be a task pursued and carried out in the spirit of praise and worship. In our work, we see God.

We see his works of provision, his works of providence, and we see his purpose and wisdom, greater the works of Yahweh, studied by all who delight in them. Let's pray and then go to Q&A maybe a little bit. I can't see with that light there. I can't see the time, so I have no idea if we have any time.

Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you marveling at who you are and how you have revealed yourself in your works, your works of creation, your works of provisioning and ordering your creation in such amazing ways. When we consider the work that you've given us in our calling and the opportunities given in life, it magnifies the significance when we consider these basic fundamental truths of Scripture in which you have revealed yourself.

Lord, help us be established with that biblical understanding, that biblical worldview to be faithful to answer the call that you've given each of us to steward the opportunities, to steward the talents that you've given us, Lord, for the good of those around us and the good of future generations and ultimately for the glory of God, in whose name we pray.

Amen. Amen. Thank you so much. Thank you for the encouragement to be excited. I love the reminder that because we're steward, we're pressures off. The Lord is doing the work, and I just love that because we can definitely feel pressure to be ministers of the gospel, but the Lord is orchestrating all of that.

If anyone has any questions, I'm happy to pass the microphone to you. Please raise your hand. Hi, Jeff. Thank you so much for the nice talk. So I had a question on something you were touching on towards the end about this theme of calling, but I think you've mentioned before just in your past visits at the Master's University that sometimes folks will see your gifts and talents and maybe before you went to the Master's Seminary sort of say, "Jeff, wow, your work at NASA is so amazing, but when are you going to go into ministry?" Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Thank you for that reminder. Yeah. So I was wondering, like, should we all just quit and go to seminary or can you speak to that? Yeah. If you really want to be sanctified, quit what you're doing, go to seminary and start doing real church work, right? No, most of us have struggled with that question, right, and we've heard those voices around us or whatnot, but no, that's absolutely a lie.

We're all in ministry, right? And I would get that question even back, I remember the early '90s, you know, "Are you thinking about going in ministry?" I get that all the time, and I kind of maybe evolved, no pun intended, in my understanding of that, but very quickly I got to an easy answer, "I'm already in ministry." And each of you are in ministry, right?

There's not this dichotomy that I think was talked about yesterday between the sacred and the secular. All of life is sacred, the work that we do, wherever we're doing it, is sacred, right? So we're all in ministry, we're all giving witness, we're all giving testimony, we're all answering the call that the creator of the universe, who is also our redeemer, has given us, and each of us in a unique way, each of us contributing to civilization around us, the community around us, the extended family around us, the family in our household in unique ways, answering the call of God.

We're all in ministry through all of life, in all aspects of life. There's no division. It's all sacred. Thank you for that. She actually gave me that charge a year ago, so... - Any other questions? - Yes, over here. - So being in outer space, I would imagine it was probably unusual to be floating around and not being sustained by gravity.

After being in space for so long, how was being able to transition back to being used to gravity after floating around in space for so long? - It was very difficult. I call it the relentless force of gravity. When you come back, then you really appreciate the force of gravity.

You're in a weightlessness for six months at a time. We exercise every day up there to try to maintain the strength of our muscles, and we're able to do so pretty successfully with our major muscle groups. By the way, I just got back from Singapore last Sunday, so that's why I'm catching my thoughts here once in a while, still recovering from jet lag.

It takes a... But you can't exercise and isolate every little muscle in the body that we take for granted and use just moving around in a gravity environment. So it takes about six weeks working with a trainer, and we have a very well-developed program that's been developed over years to regain not only our strength, but our flexibility and coordination, magnifying that when we first get back for the first week or week and a half is we...

When you first land and you try to stand up for the first time, you have absolutely no sense of balance because your vestibular system has been ignored by the brain because it's made no sense for six months. It's not functional in that environment. So you're completely reliant on visual cues.

So the first time you stand up, and I did it just as an experiment, I stood up right away and I had to focus on not only sustaining the strength to remain standing, but also concentrate on staying upright and not falling over using visual cues. And I could not stand up if I closed my eyes because of the vestibular awareness, which lasted a week and a half or so.

I think I can't stand up with my eyes closed anyway, so you're doing great. The quote you gave about the difference between being called versus being driven, can you tell us where that quote came from or was that yours? I got it from someplace. I wrote it in notes.

I don't remember. It might've been Oz Guinness. Oz Guinness wrote a book called The Call, which had a big impact on me back also in the late '90s, I think is the first time I read it. We can understand when we're driven by something, what's the source of being driven?

It usually comes from within, right? It's us. And it's pursuing some achievement or some goal, but it comes from within. Calling is a perception that's external to us. And I liken it to the political moves or whatnot. I tell people, don't run away from anything. Don't be driven away from anything.

Be called to. Even when we move around, right? We should respond to an external calling of circumstance, of need, of necessity, of open doors, not just be driven there on our own without, or worst case, being driven away from someplace, not knowing what you're going to. That's the difference.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Sorry, we have one here and then I'll go up front. Sure. Being in close proximity to other astronauts, do you have deep conversations, are you able to give the gospel message? Are there other believers? What's that like? Yeah, that's kind of an assumption that goes into the question I talked about or related to what I talked about at the beginning where you get this question, how can you work in that field and be a believer or whatnot, which reveals the perception that the area of science is for nonbelievers, right?

It's just not compatible with the Bible. I give other talks on that conflict that I talked about between scripture and science, which is rooted in history. I call it the most successful propaganda campaign in modern history, which is rooted primarily in the 1800s and then into the 20th century.

The answer is it's no different than here on earth. Up there, I have flown with other believers and there are many believers. I would say many. There are several believers in the astronaut corps, in the U.S. astronaut corps. I know of one from Canada. I don't know of any from Europe and none from Russia.

I know from Russia a few that are orthodox and some are very devoted orthodox. But I did experience opportunities to have conversations. Some people, you have no opportunity, right? They're just not interested. They know of your faith, but they're not going to give you an opportunity to enter into a conversation.

Others had great conversation about looking out the window and seeing views like you don't see on your screen and just the awe and wonder of viewing the earth. So you talk a little bit about God's creation and acknowledging God and whatnot. And others had opportunity to actually get into talking about Christ and the gospel.

It's always one-on-one. Peer pressure will usually prevent us from having a conversation if there are witnesses around of any kind. But we're still witnessing, right? We're still witnessing. I always had a, in fact, no, this one didn't, but I always had a paper Bible on board with me and I usually had it out and with rubber bands, you know, kind of held open.

Otherwise all the pages kind of float up on a table just outside my crew quarters. So I mean, you're giving witness to your faith. Some would engage with me. Others would avoid engagement just like here. I never had a hostile reaction by God's grace. I've never been asked to, I've never been censored or been asked not to speak.

I use discretion like we all should, right? When I go into a public school, I don't present the gospel in my presentation. But because I'm, in those days I was representing NASA, you know, in my official capacity. But as soon as we get to Q&A, it's inevitable that questions come out that are personal in nature regarding faith and view of God and whatnot.

And then it's personal. Now it's my personal perspective. And there's been plenty of opportunity for that. And we all have those kinds of opportunities as well. I know it takes discernment, right, to navigate through those circumstances. Thank you, Colonel Williams, for presenting so well the biblical foundations for doing science.

I think that's, well, probably in this group you said like you're preaching to the choir. But we need to know that and tell it to our students and even be ready when someone who doesn't share our biblical foundation that we say there is this foundation, the presuppositions you mentioned.

Anyway, thank you for doing that. I was going to ask you, if you care to comment, what do you think about the future of the International Space Station? Well, the plan and the policy for the station is to continue flying it. And we will continue flying it as long as we have the political support among the partners and that the leadership is with NASA and the U.S.

to continue flying it unless there's some catastrophic thing that occurs that prevents us from doing so. There's a lot I could say about that. You can go -- but ultimately it depends upon the technical durability of it and the political support to fund it. So the policy is to fly it now at least till 2030.

And you hear in the news all the time, okay, I got a question yesterday or this morning. I heard the station's coming down. Well, the news always reports on this over and over again. When we started building the space station, it had a lifetime out to 2015. And then it got extended to 2020, I think, and then extended to 2024, and then 2028, now 2030.

We're already working to certify it technically to 2034. So that's been the progression. As long as it makes sense policy-wise to continue flying it, we have that political support to do so and the funding that will continue. I think everybody realizes if we would end the program, we'd be on the ground indefinitely.

And you might be aware that there's a lunar program in development right now. The pace of that lunar program is going to be very slow just because of the level of funding. It's also going to be an international partnership, which adds another layer of complexity. But it also solidifies the political support of it.

I think the only reason we're flying in space now is because we partnered with the Russians in 1992-93 because of the geopolitical motivation in that partnership, not for space flight, but at the time for nonproliferation of nuclear and chemical weapon systems. We didn't want those things going to Iraq or Iran or North Korea.

We wanted to engage with this new Russia after the fall. And this was one way proposed and accepted to engage with them, to take what was Space Station Freedom in the '80s, announced by President Reagan, and what would have been Mir-2 in Russia, and come up with a proposal to integrate them together.

And that became the International Space Station, which is another whole talk and story. But an amazing, amazing history in God's providence. Thank you for your encouraging talk, blending the Word of God with even sharing how we can think about the theology of it in our personal life. I guess the question I have is about, you know, you mentioned something incidentally at the beginning of your talk, how a lot of people are influenced by YouTube and things like that.

I'm sure in the capacity that the Lord's put you to do ministry, how do you help believers who may have good theology even about the sufficiency of Scripture, but being led astray by these things like YouTube? How do you think that through and minister to people? Yeah, you're talking about like flat Earth as an example?

Yeah, a lot. There's so many things. Yeah. And I first heard about that when I got sent up to me some comments on social media in my last flight in 2016. And when I first read about flat Earth, I thought it was a parody. I thought it was humor, satire, and it wasn't until I landed in the fall that I started getting more on the internet and seeing, oh no, this is a real thing.

In fact, I found a chapter of the Flat Earth Society in my city, in League City, two miles from NASA Johnson Space Center. And when I went on the road talking, especially in churches, I would get that question all the time. And usually it was, hey, it was not, I'm a flat Earther and you're a liar.

Usually it was, hey, I know somebody, there's somebody in our congregation or I have a brother or I have a cousin or a friend who believes in the flat Earth, can you help me with that? And in the beginning I tried to engage logically in the argument, to make the argument that no, the Earth is in fact not flat, that it's as we've been taught in school.

But I quickly realized that in part because I was part of the conspiracy and I was a liar and I wasn't going to be believed anyway. And there was no logic in the argument. It was a fabrication of interpretation of a few figurative texts in scripture and other things and primarily the authority of YouTube, some influencers out there, which is a new word in our vocabulary in that context, that there was no logic behind it.

So my answer quickly got shortened to utter foolishness. And that's all it is. It's utter foolishness. And it's a testimony to our fallen nature and the impact of the fall into sin on our nature and our inability that we all have, by the way, to some degree, our inability to think clearly, logically, clearly, or, you know, consistently.

Thank you so much. If you have more questions, please see Colonel Williams over lunch. And now we're going to break for lunch, but before then, would you please pray for us? Sure. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you again, reminded of your provision, your provision of even gathering us together here providentially in this place.

We pray that through your provision, through your grace, that we can be an encouragement to one another, to strengthen and establish us in our faith, that we may give glory to Christ in our calling and in our work. We also thank you for the provision of food, the basic necessities of life, Lord, and we pray your blessing upon the rest of this symposium, as well as your blessing upon the food that we're about to receive to the nourishment of our bodies to give us strength to continue in the answering of the call.

In the name of Christ. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.