Mondaychapel Bible Companion

By Melanie Pearlman

As an assignment from her principal, she began giving weekly science-themed Bible lessons at her school and after nine years, has compiled some of those lessons into a book!

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9781664297814

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 Melanie Pearlman.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-9780-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-9781-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023907867

WestBow Press rev. date: 04/27/2023

Contents

God’s Artwork at the Aquarium

Robots

Yeast: the Fungus that Concerns a Major Jewish Holiday

Immune System

I Don’t Believe in Germs

The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur)

Phytoplankton

The Sound of God

Ruminate Like a Ruminant

I am with you

Who is this King of Glory?

Good Father

Dichotomous Keys and Discernment

Blood Puddles

Neverending

We Know the Ending - God Wins!

Natural Selection

Flipped Upside-Down Message

Special Design

Thunderstorms

God Is a Mystery

As big as…

The Abundant God of the Universe

God’s Unfailing Love

Zoom In and Out

Bird-Watchers

Psalm 136

Just Like Air, God Is There

Biomimicry

Bones

The Heavens

Scientific Root Words

Where Do Rivers Come From?

Planted by Streams of Water

Solar System Scale

Entropy

One Percent

God Is Trustworthy

Twice Fulfilled

Stork Migration

God Is Light

JOY

The Wonder of Water

Hiding in Plain Sight

First Things First

The Ribbon of Gold

Losing To Save

Recycling

Storm on the Sea of Galilee

Jesus Was Born in April?

Weather Prediction From the First Century

Triple Point

Fruit

Necessity of the Gardener

God Is an Artist

Combinations In the Crowd

My Kids’ Artwork

Force Diagrams

Skeletal Joints in the Human Body

Möbius Strip

Smell

A New Creation!

Poor Detectors

Resonance

Chicken Egg

Symbiosis: Commensalism and Parasitism

10 Little Rubber Ducks, by Eric Carle, and the real event that happened on January 10, 1992

Garbage Tornado

Trial By Fire

The Scientific Method

The Power of Doubling

Only One Answer

In Tune With the Spirit

Harmony

The Master Builder

Eyes

Evaluating Sources

Mmm, Mmm, Good

How God Made You

Cornerstone

Fiction vs. Nonfiction Books

Planting a Seed So That It Dies

A Cellular Doxology

Alpha and Omega

What is MondayChapel?

I teach science and math to junior high and high school students. At the beginning of the second year of my employment at a Christian school in California, my principal suggested that I speak in our 8am chapel every Monday morning with a science-themed Bible lesson. Neither of us really knew what that might look like, but I agreed, enjoyed it, and continued with the assignment almost every Monday for 9 years! I came to refer to it as one word: MondayChapel. Some of the lessons turned out to be scientific explanations of events mentioned in the Bible, some were analogies using scientific principles or something in nature, and some were simply astounded praises of God’s Creation! This is a compilation of many of those lessons.

What is a Bible Companion?

The first year I grouped MondayChapel talks into four themes: God Is Creative, God Is Big, God Has Rules, and God Created Us. But since that time, topics have widely varied across books of the Bible and scientific disciplines. So, how to arrange them, now? It turned out that I had taught on almost every book of the Bible, so I have put the lessons in that canonical order, with the intent that this book be used alongside your Bible reading. Let God’s created world and His revealed Word complement each other!

Of course, you can read it front to back, if you want.

God’s Artwork at the Aquarium

God blessed them and said to them, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Genesis 1:28

When each of my children was in 5th grade, I went on an overnight school field trip with their class to the Long Beach Aquarium, in Long Beach, CA. We learned that a horseshoe crab has copper in its blue blood (as opposed to the iron in ours, which makes ours red). It’s used in medicine because of its anti-infection properties. We got to pet sharks and learned that they have an unending supply of teeth! If one falls out, it is always replaced. There were flashlight fish, who live in the depths of the ocean, with bioluminescent patches under their eyes; and comb jellies, whose gelatinous bodies bend and reflect light at the level of the wavelength of light (like the back of a CD or the surface of a soap bubble), so that they look like disco lights in the dark ocean! Such cool animals are the magnificent handiwork of our Lord! Then I noticed the words used in the aquarium signage, like "tide pool exhibit and freshwater gallery: those are words used in a place where works of art are displayed! Our God is a master Artist, and His works are many and wonderful to behold. And yet, in Scripture, masterpiece is used to describe us humans. Masterpiece" is a word that means the best, or most well-known, or the pinnacle of an artist’s career. Of all of God’s Creation, we are God’s best work. In His art gallery, we would have our own special room with spotlights on us. How do you show off God’s creative skill with the way you live and use the gifts He’s given you?

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is mankind that You are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? Psalm 8:3-9

GOD’S MUSEUM ACTIVITY

If you were going to open a museum to show off God’s best creations, what would you include? Think about it for a while and then choose three things that you would feature in your museum about God. Have a friend do it, too, and then compare your answers.

Robots

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. And the Lord God commanded the man, You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die. Genesis 2:8-9,15-17

Did you ever wonder why God gave Adam and Eve a tree that they weren’t allowed to eat from? Why not only offer good choices? Then, no sin, right? As humans, we have been given the ability to choose to do right or wrong, which is a loving offer from God. Think of it this way: If we were unable to do wrong, yes, we would do right all the time, but it wouldn’t mean that we were good people - we didn’t have any choice! And we wouldn’t be able to love God or obey Him, we would only be choosing from a select number of right options. Robots do only what they are programmed to do. Robots cannot love, nor can they choose to obey or disobey. God wants us to love Him, and to choose to obey Him. The gift of love comes with the possibility of unloving choices, too. And sometimes we choose wrong. It’s a sad part of our existence here on earth, but it means that we get to show God how much we love Him by doing what He asks of us. If there were only good choices, our obedience wouldn’t mean anything.

Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.... Jesus replied, Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me. John 14:21,23-24

This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this