When I learned the Large Hadron Collider had to contend with a bird having dropped a piece of bread in the works halting the operation I immediately thought of the ravens feeding Elijah: I Kings 17:6: “And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening; and he drank of the brook.”

FOXNEWS: November 7, 2009: “The massive machine at the center of the world's biggest scientific experiment has malfunctioned again – derailed by a bit of bread dropped by a bird. The Hadron Collider, buried 100m under the ground near Geneva, Switzerland, is supposed to recreate conditions seen after the Big Bang. Scientist’s hope the $7.3 billion machine will shed light on the event that many scientists believe gave birth to the universe around 14 billion years ago, but the project has suffered a series of setbacks. The latest saw a ‘bit of baguette,’ thought to have been dropped by a bird, fall onto machinery, causing a fault. Sections of the machine, which fires protons round a 17-mile-long tunnel at close to the speed of light in order to smash them in to each other, then overheated. Members of the public who had been looking at data published online noticed the temperature changes and contacted journalists at The Register. They alerted those in charge of the project at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). According to scientists, had the Collider been in operation at the time it would have shut down automatically, avoiding the damage of last September when a large amount of helium leaked into the tunnel. But the difficulties faced by those working on the project have prompted some members of the scientific community to speculate, in all seriousness, that the machine is sabotaging itself — from the future. The theory is that the particle that physicists hope to produce might be ‘abhorrent to nature,’ so that once created it would work backwards through time to put a stop to whatever created it. However Dr Mike Lamont, who works at the CERN control center, said that the nature of the experiment meant that glitches were inevitable. ‘This thing is so complicated and so big, it's bound to have problems sometimes,’ he said.”

I’m still of the mind the investors in the LHC are looking for an enormous payoff rather than purely adding to scientific knowledge and the project does seem to be “jinxed” so far, at least to those of a mind to consider such a thing plausible. There is no doubt in my mind God knows every sparrow that falls to the ground as Jesus said, and just as He caused the ravens to feed Elijah could cause a bird to interfere with the LHC. However, just as Dr. Lamont stated; a machine of such mind-boggling complexity is fraught with potential problems, and even if these are finally overcome we still don’t know what is going to happen when and if the LHC does fulfill its intended function.

That some are seriously speculating about the possibility of Einstein’s “spooky action (or communication) at a distance” in relation to something (or someone?) from the future sabotaging the LHC at least sustains my continuing to believe there are people of science keeping an open mind to the fantastic. The more that science enables us to peer into atomic structure and our universe the more is discovered that opens the door to speculation about the fantastic. While many are willing to credit Newton with rare genius, they are not so willing to credit his attempts to interpret Scripture or his conviction that Intelligent Design of God was at work in creating the universe and life. But, Alchemy and the Philosopher’s Stone (one possible discovery using the LHC?) are beginning to get the attention of scientists and some are even speculating as I have done about Astrology, knowing as anyone does that the Constellations as per the ancient maps and zodiacs could not be discerned by the naked eye in ancient times any more than they can be today. So, as with many mysteries concerning ancient people and the artifacts declaring they could not have possibly accomplished some of these things without “outside help” of one kind or another I continue to call attention to God putting it in the minds of people like those specially chosen to build the Tabernacle to put it into the minds of others to do His bidding.

On the other hand, I believe the Devil sure has those to do his bidding as well. To paraphrase Thoreau, while God may seem without much company the Devil draws a crowd. And let’s face it; from its infancy the “news” doesn’t make money telling of the good works of good people; it is still the accident drivers slow down to look at, and just as “Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.”

While I see Intelligent Design the result of the mind of God in all of His creation the mysteries of God are abundant as well. “Who has known the mind of God that he may instruct Him?” As thoughts of the fantastic and speculation about many things flow through my own mind, I am given more and more to wonder at the mysteries of God. But these thoughts and speculations invariably call to mind as well the words from a hymn: “Farther along we’ll know all about it, farther along we’ll understand why.”