I was fortunate enough to attend a wonderful school from 6th grade through high school. At the end of my 7th grade year, my English teacher gave us all a parting present. She had a stack of bookmarks with pictures of Albert Einstein on them, and each one had a different quotation on it. She’d sift through the stack, trying to match quotation with student, and gave me one that read this: “I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.”
It’s hard to convince a 7th grader that there is something more going on than the details of life, but that bookmark went a long way towards making me think about it. And as I spent the next few years wondering what exactly God’s thoughts are, I found it no coincidence that, inscribed above the physics building of my college was the expression “Nature’s laws are God’s thoughts.”
I’ve learned only a little bit about the theories of Albert Einstein, but I think I get the general idea of relativity – at least, I understand that our concepts of time and space depend on where we are and what we are doing.
I am currently a month away from graduating medical school, and I have spent the last four years intensely studying nature’s laws as they apply to the human body. I know God’s thoughts encompass a lot more than the little bit of medicine I have seen this far, but I’ve also appreciated the glimpse into the divine architectural plan that I have been so fortunate to see.
The further I get away from that late spring day when I was given my Einstein bookmark, the more important his words seem to me. I find myself asking questions like “what really matters” more frequently than ever. Moreover, as those questions become more commonplace in my daily life, my memory of being given that bookmark is more vivid than it had been. If you were to ask me now when I was given that bookmark I wouldn’t know what to say – it feels as though I have been pondering that question my whole life, and yet I find myself doing so with the verve of a scientist on the brink of discovery.
As it happens, next weekend is my 10th year high school reunion. As I get closer to it, the memories are getting thicker and thicker. On the brink of graduating from medical school and starting a surgery residency, I can't get thoughts of Einstein out of my head. Getting a glimpse into God's thoughts is one thing, but understanding God's thoughts as they apply to my life - and living accordingly - is something entirely different. And so it begs the question: am I living accordingly?
