“And he is before all things, and in him all things consist.”

“Atomic glue.”  That was what he said.  Do you squeeze it out of a tube?  Does it come in a jar?  Can I buy it at the hardware store?  Well, not exactly.  Atomic glue doesn’t really exist, at least not in material form.  Atomic glue was the answer a high school physics teacher gave to a question posed by a student curious about the holding power of the nucleus of an atom.  “What holds it together?” he asked.  After a rather vague response, he went with his somewhat mythical answer: “Atomic glue.”  There really is no physical substance that makes the positive and neutrally charged components of the nucleus stick together.  They just do.  Gravity holds the negatively charged electrons in their orbits around the nucleus.  But it’s the nucleus that defies scientific explanation.  So, the quantum leap to atomic glue.

I say “somewhat mythical answer” because while there is no material answer to the student’s question, there is a very real, yet spiritual, answer to it.  We move in the same reasonable, logical direction that Intelligent Design (ID) posits — some things in our physical world don’t quite add up or can be described only by natural/naturalistic explanations.  There’s no mythology or fairy tales in ID like atomic glue.  Realizing the complete inadequacy of ultimate material explanations in the areas of origins and fundamental realities of our universe and considering reasonable, non-material answers is what ID is essentially all about, not shutting the door to the plausibility of metaphysical answers/realities without getting specifically religious.  We leave that to religious leaders, as it should be.

In Colossians 1:17 we find the counterpart to atomic glue.  It’s Jesus.  On the surface that may sound like a bit of a stretch, but it’s not.  In this section of Colossians, Paul writes that all things were created “by him,” “through him” and “for him” (v. 16).  John (1:1) agrees with this assessment.  In other words, Jesus is the Creator, and what the Creator makes he runs and maintains.  He is the sustainer of the physical universe and holds all things together.

Consider this: when an army sends a soldier out to the front lines, it usually takes 5 additional soldiers to support him.  Similarly, the power of the point of a spear is in the size and strength of the shaft, not necessarily the sharpness of the point.  What power does a single pointed head by itself have in penetrating an object?  Little to none, unless it is backed up by force.  Again, when missionaries are sent into the harvest field, it is the unity, resources, prayers and encouragement of those on the support team back home that typically make the difference between the missionary’s success or failure.  However, God doesn’t have and doesn’t need a “support team” to maintain the universe.  There are not the “many” to assist or back up the one God.  It is the opposite: the One God single-handedly does this all by himself!

The description of what the universe is like, or will be like, without his sustaining power is found in 2 Peter 3.  Peter couldn’t be any more descriptive or emphatic.  When God has had enough of this fallen universe, and all the souls that will be saved are in fact saved, the end will come and come quickly with “great noise, fervent heat and melt[ing] elements” (NKJV).  In fact, he uses these words twice (except for noise) for emphasis.  In a word, everything comes unglued.  And this is no mythology.  The universe will be destroyed in the greatest cataclysmic disaster ever.  We know the kind of power and energy released by such nuclear activity from the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in World War II, nuclear experiments and other related scientific discoveries.  The annihilation is confirmed for us on film: total destruction, unimaginable repercussions and indescribable suffering for the survivors.  Magnify that by a trillion gazillion times for when the whole universe explodes!  However, it actually takes more power, more energy to maintain and sustain the system in the first place.  That’s more power that all the supercomputers that could ever be built can calculate!

This, of course, only addresses God’s sustaining power in the physical/material realm.  How about the spiritual realm?  The relational realm?  The economic realm?  Or the future?  If God has the power to sustain the entire universe, don’t you think he’s serious when he says, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:8)?  Doesn’t it mean that his grace has unlimited power to sustain us?  Of course.  It comes from the same spiritual well.  The really big question left for us is, do we really believe it?