George Washington Carver's Conversation with the Creator

George Washington Carver, the brilliant agricultural chemist born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864, made a habit that puzzled his colleagues at Tuskegee Institute. Each morning before dawn, he walked the fields and woods surrounding campus, collecting specimens — wildflowers, soil samples, fungi, seed pods. He called these walks "conversations with the Creator."

When asked how he discovered over three hundred uses for the humble peanut, Carver's answer was disarmingly simple. He said he asked God, "Mr. Creator, why did You make the universe?" and God told him that question was too big for his little mind. So Carver asked, "Then, Mr. Creator, tell me what man was made for." Still too big. Finally, Carver asked, "Mr. Creator, tell me what the peanut was made for." And God began to show him — one revelation at a time — the oils, the dyes, the proteins, the medicines hidden inside that unassuming shell.

What Carver understood is exactly what the psalmist sings: "O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all." Every peanut, every blade of grass, every creature teeming in the sea holds the fingerprint of the Almighty. Creation is not random abundance. It is deliberate, wise, and breathtakingly detailed — the work of a God who opens His hand and satisfies every living thing. Our proper response, like Carver's, is not merely to study but to worship.