Four Dimensional

Last night my engineer-studying son called. It was late for us, after 9, and since things here start moving shortly after 5 am I had to make myself walk down the hall and pick up the phone just to see who it was. When you’re the Mom with young kids you look forward to the days when your sleeping schedule will be normal again. Someone should tell those Moms that it’s a permanent vocation. Your life will never be what it once was-and you wouldn’t choose to go backward. Teenagers, and then college kids, love to talk late at night.

The engineer was talkative for him, telling me about his clock project. The pieces had begun to arrive in the mail and they will soon start their design. It will be narrowed down to four teams and then the winning one will actually have their project reproduced full scale in the student center. It has to conform to certain specifications and give time according to the Greenwich Mean Time, which is the universal. (Yes, I do remember that from our shortwave radio days.)

Then he went on to describe his Advanced Physics class and how time is actually another dimension. Gravitational pull on the earth affects time and if you could go and orbit the sun time would actually slow down for you. When they design satellites in outer space they have to put mathematical programs on them that compensate for the lack of gravity so that they don’t change postion because it goes at a rate of almost 3 feet in a year……It’s fun to hear him excited and I’m so thankful to God for this boy whose mind functions so totally different than mine and I’m glad he understands what he’s talking about though mostly I just agree because my math classes ended with trigonometry and analytical geometry and they were so many years ago.

There are long pauses and I have to prompt the conversation until I hit an area of interest again. He doesn’t waste words. I compare my amazement of the detail of higher math to the simplicity of construction going on outside my front door. They are building 2 story duplexes and water towers by hand. No heavy equipment. They carry the cement up hand constructed scaffolding (bits of 2x4s all nailed together) and they carry it in 5 gallon buckets, one bucket at a time. In order to make sure a foundation is level they construct a wooden frame larger than the base, then they tie strings at the right levels and break giant rocks into small bits joining them with buckets of cement and constantly rechecking their strings to make sure it’s level. That they can build a decent building without any of the benefits of technology is amazing to me! And he remembers how in Madagascar when they were on a mission team they used a bottle of water turned on it’s side to check the level. Born while we lived in Asia, he’s been to every continent except South America- maybe one day he will be the engineer on a project there.

Soon it was time for him to hang up and head out to devotions with his floor. And as I headed back to bed I thanked God for a glimpse into the dimension where my handsome young engineer lives. Thank you Lord for a long refreshing talk with the engineer, for fellowship of prayer together with the ladies, for fresh  pine straw on the garden and strawberries starting, for a warm meal after a chilly day, for flavored coffee creamers, dreams of a ladies day out to come…..