My school’s chaplain—a truly amazing man of God—is struggling in the hospital as I write these words.  Please lift Father Jason Hamshaw up in your prayers, dear readers.  I do not know the nature of his affliction, but the last I heard, he was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), which never bodes well.  He is a relatively young man, and a loving husband and father.  One of his sons is a student here at my school.  Pray, and pray hard.

Because he is in the hospital, I was asked to deliver the chapel lesson/devotional/homily the morning of Thursday, 26 October 2023.  Here is the devotional I wrote, with a huge debt of gratitude to The Daily Encouraging Word, which I substantially adapted and modified for this lesson:

Every single one of us in this room is an explorer. We might not don pith helmets and machetes and go cutting through the brush in search of lost civilizations or ancient treasure, but we are daily engaged in an exploration of our world—of God’s abundant, varied Creation. Across all of your classes and all of your subjects, you are learning more and more about the fascinating width, depth, and breadth of God’s Creation.

Genesis 1:28 gives us God’s first Commission to all of us. Here’s that passage, as God spoke to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (NKJV):

“Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”

The Word of the Lord—thanks be to God! Let us pray.

This brief commission to “fill the earth and subdue it” (or “govern it,” as some translations put it) is packed with significance. We are to cherish and protect God’s Creation, but we are also called to understand it, to study it, to examine it. We do so not just for intellectual fulfillment or for our personal utility—those are just fringe benefits. Rather, we seek to understand Creation because, my doing so, we come to understand God, and to take joy in the abundant blessings He Bestowed upon us.

Our modern world frame science and faith as being at odds with one another, but nothing could be further from the Truth. The major figures of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution did not seek to dethrone God through scientific inquiry; they sought to understand Him and His Creation better! In doing so, they improved our world, but more importantly, they glorified God.

So as you go through your academic careers—and through your lives!—approach it as a grand adventure, an incredible expedition of exploration. Our school prayer calls us to be “a lively center for sound learning, new discovery, and the pursuit of wisdom.” Those are not simply idle words that sound good when recited in unison every Thursday morning. They are a direct reference to God’s first Commission to us: to explore His Creation so that we can glorify Him all the more!