In God’s own image, God created them.
Genesis 1:27b
Created in God’s image, what characteristic of God did a human being inherit? One such characteristic is creativity. When creation was completed, God took pleasure in it and called it “very good.” Therefore, any time a human being creates something good, beneficial, beautiful, and pure, he or she is expressing a godly characteristic.
Recently, one Sunday, as the worship leader, Erv Boschmann showed us a marvelous specimen of creativity made by Mel Glick: A wooden cube having three cylindrical holes with axes through the midpoints of pairs of opposite faces, and equal diameter slightly smaller than the diameter of a nickel. Yet, a nickel was placed inside the cavity where the three holes overlapped! How did the nickel get in there?
Mel Glick, a long-time FMCer, had made several copies of the “holey cube” and had given them as gifts to different people. What a beautiful way Mel worshiped the Creator by engaging in an act of creation! What a creative way Erv led the worship service by using the “holey cube” as an illustration of the joy inherent in creation!
I was curious about the mysterious way the nickel entered the hole smaller than itself. Mel has gone on to his heavenly abode, so, I cannot ask him about the secret. Erv said he has a theory, but he does not know for sure. So, I will let my imagination run wild. Here are some of my ideas:
- Make an extra channel along one cylindrical hole. Roll the nickel along that channel until it reaches the central cavity. Then fill the channel with liquid wood and varnish the cube.
- Heat the nickel until it is red hot and soft. Using tongs, bend it and push it through the hole. When it reaches the cavity, bend it back to its flat shape and let it cool.
- Soak the specimen in water and heat until the water boils. The holes will expand slightly. Push the nickel in to reach the cavity. When cooled and dried, the nickel will not come out.
Dear readers, let me leave you to construct other possible solutions to the puzzle, while I get back to the story of my interaction with Erv.
I wrote an email to Erv: “Mel’s “holey cube” is simply beautiful! In contrast, I am no good in making such objects. But I can let my imagination do what my hands cannot. A few months earlier, two undergraduate students in my calculus class wrote a scientific paper with me.’’ I attached our paper. Erv encouraged me to write an article for MennoExpressions related to our creative research.
My two students turned collaborators, Jaskirat Kaur and Jasmeen Lally, are pursuing the highly creative profession of medicine. The research they did with me demonstrates their creativity born out of curiosity and passion for truth and beauty. We studied the optimum diameter of the cylindrical holes that maximizes the total exposed surface area of the drilled cube (the original area of the six faces of the cube, minus the circular area lost on each face, plus the inner surface of the holes). When we studied the math problem, we did not have a specimen in hand. Instead, we used our imagination and a 3-D software called Tinkercad to draw the holes through the cube. To study the inner surface of the holes, we would fill the holes with molten metal, then cool until the metal solidified, and finally chip away the wood. In fact, we did none of these actions; we just imagined doing them. Inquisitive readers may freely download the artifact of our creation: the scientific paper.
We also allowed the axes of the holes to pass through a pair of opposite vertices or the midpoints of a pair of opposite edges. I wish I could ask Mel to make me those new specimens. His creativity is just the right skill to complement our imagination. Since Mel is not with us anymore, we hope someone else with similar craftsmanship will step up to collaborate with us.
To conclude, I restate that when an act of creation, which produces an object, a concept, a writing or a recipe, there is a slice of the same joy that God experienced when God created the universe, the sky, the sea, the earth, all living creatures, and in God’s own likeness humankind.
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About the author
Jyoti Sarkar
Jyoti Sarkar attends FMC and works at IUPUI in the Department of Mathematical Sciences. Born and brought up in Calcutta, India, he earned a PhD in Statistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is happily settled in Indianapolis since 1991; and he was joined by his wife in 2000 and son in 2004. He is a lifelong learner of reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic, and of late of a freeware called R.