The Scientist Who Listened to Peanuts

George Washington Carver rose each morning at four o'clock, walking the fields around Tuskegee Institute in the predawn darkness. He called these walks his conversations with the Creator. "I asked the Great Creator what the universe was made for," Carver once said. "'Ask for something more in keeping with that little mind of yours,' He replied. So I asked Him what the peanut was made for."

From that humble question came over three hundred uses for the peanut — dyes, plastics, fuel, medicine. But Carver never saw himself as an inventor. He saw himself as a listener. Every plant cell, every soil sample, every blossom opening at dawn was creation speaking the language of praise. He simply paid attention.

Psalm 148 calls the sun and moon, the sea creatures and cedars, the frost and lightning to praise the Lord. The psalmist understood what Carver discovered in his laboratory and his garden walks — that creation is not silent. The mountains are not mute. The stars are not indifferent. Everything that exists hums with the glory of the One who spoke it into being.

Carver kept his laboratory door marked with a simple sign: "God's Little Workshop." He knew the praise was already happening. His job was simply to join in.

When we open our eyes to the world around us, we step into a chorus already in progress — the ancient, ongoing hymn that Psalm 148 invites every creature, every element, and every human heart to sing.