Don’t ever think it’s just a simple peanut! God doesn’t.

We all live somewhere between the secrets of the universe and at the other end of the spectrum… the quark. None of us can fathom the immensity of our universe, nor can we comprehend the size of a quark (smaller than 43 billion-billionths of a centimeter).

My guess is that most of us live about half way between both of these mysteries. Like, maybe the mystery of a lowly peanut!

 George Washington Carver was born into slavery in 1864, but entered the world with a driving desire for knowledge. He applied to Highland College in Kansas but upon arriving was rejected because of his race. He would go on to study at Simpson College and later earn a Master’s degree at Iowa State Agricultural College (now Iowa State University.)

Here’s where his story gets interesting. He asked God to show him the secrets of the universe. But instead, God seemed to have told him he was “…too small to grasp the universe. But I will show you the secret of the peanut.” 

And God did just that!

Although the 13^th Amendment had recently abolished slavery, many African Americans were barely eking out a living through sharecropping. The primary crop of the south was still cotton, but planting cotton year after year was depleting the soil of nitrogen and valuable nutrients.

From Carver they learned to rotate crops, alternating cotton with sweet potatoes or legumes like peanuts, soybeans and cowpeas. But the bonus was that the universe of the peanut was opened up to him by God.

In his lifetime, he created more than 300 different uses for the peanut, including glue, ink, cooking oil, ice cream flavoring, cosmetics, gas, shoe polish and my favorite… peanut butter!

This devotional wasn’t written as just a tribute to Mr. Carver. The real hero behind his story is God. When an interviewer asked the agriculturist where he learned so much about peanuts, Carver said, from a book… the Bible. “Does the Bible tell about the peanut?” he was asked. Carver replied, “No sir, but it tells about the God who made the peanut.”

This is your God – the One who constructed and runs the universe and has the time to count the number of quarks in your body just for fun! You can trust Him with your whole life.

“We cannot wrap our minds around God’s wisdom and knowledge!

 Its depths can never be measured!”

Romans 11:33 Voice Bible