“It hurts my brain to think that there was nothing…and then there was…something.”

Out of the mouth of my grandson came a concept normally contemplated by the deep thinkers, the theologians, the philosophers, and the scientists.

That’s what my seven-year-old grandson said to me as we stared at the stars a couple nights ago. We were having a ‘star talk’ in the jacuzzi, talking about God, the universe, our place in the universe, and how we got here. You know, just simple grandson talk. (And maybe my single favorite thing to do.)

Then he stood up, water dripping off his body, looking into the heavens, and said “Think about it, Opa. There was nothing…and then there was something…and now…now there is everything.” He spread his arms wide.

Are you kidding me! I thought. He gets that at seven? He gets the idea of creation. The idea of the cosmos. The idea of God. The idea that everything we now see in front of us was not always here. Even the idea that a thought can make his brain hurt.

How can a youngster get something that transcendent? How can a young man grasp eternity before he knows his multiplication tables? Have we lost something as adults?

Maybe because it’s baked into us. Maybe because it’s as instinctive as understanding gravity. Could the most complex thoughts in the universe also be the most intuitive?

That’s my suspicion. I happen to believe that “the beginning” and the cosmos and belief in God is logical and natural and instinctual. Yes, study and science and literature and thinkers like C.S. Lewis add heft to our belief. But at its core, I believe faith is part of our human DNA.

So what do you say to the person for whom belief in God feels like a foreign language? What about the atheist whose atheism is as natural as breathing? Well, I’m not sure what to say. But let me say something that has been brewing in me for a long time and I probably shouldn’t say:

Maybe some people just didn’t get the God gene.

I know that’s heretical to some. I know I may be way off base. But that’s how it feels to me because I’ve seen that blank look so many times. As one who has taught the Bible to thousands of individuals, most of it one-on-one, I’ve come across many very sincere people for whom belief in God is as unnatural as believing in a flat earth.

How is that? Is it because they have a bad heart? Are they just trying to protect their unbelieving turf? It doesn’t appear that way to me. But God, he will be the final judge in that department.

For me, I will relish my seven-year-old’s brain-hurt about ‘nothing…then something…then everything. I will relish that “everything” we now experience. It’s a good time in the universe. It’s a good time on this earth. Look at the comforts we enjoy: the health and lifespan we can reasonably hope for, the richness of literature and film and art, conditioned air, the way we can hopscotch the planet and visit those we love (having just returned from Denver). And one of my recent pleasures—enjoying some of the amazing God-thinkers like Madeline L’Engle, George MacDonald (who I just discovered and love), and C.S. Lewis. They stimulate my thinking so much that sometimes I want to shout.

But even with all their wisdom and all their profundity and all their insight, I’m going to relish the most simplistic thing of all.

There was a time when there was nothing, not even time.

Then there appeared, perhaps out of the singularity, something.

And then…who knows how long ago, maybe 13.5 billion years, there appeared an inhabited planet, with a man and his grandson, sitting in heated water, gazing into the heavens, marveling at the unlikelihood of their existence, musing the likelihood of God, drinking it all in, saying “thank you for the everything.”