Let Creation Speak! An Invitation to Awe and Wonder by Michael Guillen, PhDSample

BURIED TREASURE

On April 15, 1912, the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic—on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City—collided with an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean. Of the more than 2,200 souls on board, only about 700 survived—making it the deadliest cruise ship disaster ever during peacetime.

Among the Titanic’s ultra-​­wealthy, first-​­class passengers were some of the who’s who of high society. When the ship sank, their prized possessions went down with it. Over the years, salvage crews and treasure hunters have recovered some of the valuables, including an 18-carat diamond-​and-​­platinum ring, a gold pocket watch, and a large trove of expensive brooches, necklaces, and cuff links.

One expedition almost succeeded in salvaging a twenty-​­ton section of the Titanic, but the ropes snapped several hundred feet from the surface, and the massive section sank back to the seafloor.

Many people regard such recovery efforts as desecrations of a burial site and have called for them to stop. In 2019, the United Kingdom and the United States signed a treaty aimed at protecting the Titanic from further looting, but it’s questionable whether it can be enforced.

Meanwhile, the wreckage faces yet another ignominy—one so small it can only be seen through a microscope. It’s a unique, saltwater-​­loving bacteria—Halomonas titanicae—that feeds on iron.

Scientists discovered the microscopic critters on rusticles—icicles made of rust—salvaged from the Titanic. At the rate H. titanicae is chomping away at the wreckage, scientists estimate the vaunted, unsinkable Titanic—in its day, the largest, most opulent passenger liner ever built—will be completely gone in about thirty years.

REFLECTION

Like the citizens of most of the world’s industrialized nations, which are dominated by materialistic, secular cultures, we are constantly solicited to buy things, with glib promises that the consumables will make us happy. Truth is, the latest shiny objects and newest gizmos won’t ever make us happy, but they will make someone else rich at our expense. Deep down, we know that; yet we keep buying stuff as if there’s no tomorrow.

One day, for all of us, there will be no tomorrow. Like those who went down with the Titanic, we’ll wave goodbye to this world and leave behind our prized possessions for others to inherit, plunder, or simply throw away. And then what?

The Bible urges us to invest in the future—in our existence beyond the grave—not by building up storehouses of stuff, but by investing in our relationship with the God who made us and loves us. The God we’ll see face-​­to-​­face and who won’t be impressed with how many toys we accumulated during our short years on Earth.