The Higgs Boson And The Glory Of God

It has only been in the last few years that I have come to the place in the Lord that I am regularly endeavoring to be thankful for everything that transpires in my life, whether good or ill. It is also striking that it took me too long to verbally express that God is the Creator of His wonders in nature. The other day, my wife, Laurie, brought home a sprig with clusters of purple flowers that had broken off in the garden area where she was working. When she showed me the beauty of it, I said, like I do these days, “God made that.”

Yes, He did. He created beauty. Intricacy. Complexity. Wonders.

Impossibilities.

Jeremiah wrote,

“Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you” (Jeremiah 32:17).¹

It should be obvious to us that if God could create the heavens and earth and everything within them, then He could do anything.

Having said that, please allow me to introduce to you the Higgs boson. Here is a concise description from Wikipedia.

“In 2012, CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. The Higgs mechanism is generally accepted as an important ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics, without which certain particles would have no mass.” ²

Thus, if the Higgs boson was not found, physicists would still not understand the origin of mass.

Peter Higgs had worked forty years to discover if this theorized boson truly existed. He died this last April, but he was very happy that his theory was substantiated before his life ended. May Mr. Higgs have been given the grace to know his Creator and Savior before He passed away.

However, subsequent research has shown physicists that the Higgs boson is not the answer they were seeking, and they have more work to do. I would try to explain this, but I am unable to do so. What I have read and watched has made my brain, poor thing, melt. The reader is encouraged to study on his own, but you have been warned.

Nevertheless, once more, the Lord God Almighty is confounding those brilliant physicists, instructing them that more wonders lay ahead. Most of them will not believe that He had created the hard-to-discover Higgs boson, but here, thousands of years after creation and millions of dollars, ten years of construction with the collaboration of ten thousand scientists, He, by His grace was revealing its existence to them in order to reveal His glory.

Just as the Lord had created the Higgs boson, He created everything else, as well. Now, if He made the heavens and the earth by His great power and outstretched arm, is it possible that anything else is too difficult for Him? The answer must be a resounding, “No, there isn’t.” This is a beautiful truth, and Christians would nod their heads in agreement, but how does this impact our everyday lives?

Here is how. Perhaps you have fallen ill. You may have cardiovascular issues. Your hip or knee joint is painful and needs to be replaced. Your doctor informs you that you have cancer. A loved one unexpectedly dies at all too young an age. Could God have prevented these things from happening? Of course. There is nothing too hard for the One who created the heavens and the earth.

So, why didn’t He do something?

Unless He tells us, the answer to that question is unknowable to us in our lifetimes. “It was His will,” may seem unsatisfactory to the sufferer, but it is true. To be told that we live in a sin-soaked world where death reigns and will reign until Jesus returns may not be helpful during a time of grief and pain, but it is true.

We may be taken aback by the startling truth from the Gospel of John. A man born blind was healed and when the disciples asked Jesus if his sin or the sin of his parents had caused his blindness, Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3).

What kind of God is this? He is the God who promises that His glory will be revealed to us.

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God” (Romans 8:18–19).

Lord, help us to trust You, the Creator of all things and our loving and caring Savior.

¹All Scripture references are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (2016). Crossway Bibles.

²https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs boson

Gif courtesy Mozilla images.