Many years ago, I taught as a small Christian college in Florida.
The school was small, and the faculty was young and inexperienced. It was
a great inspiration, therefore, when the distinguished Christian scientist,
Dr. A. W. Dicus joined our number to serve as academic dean and give intellectual
leadership to our faculty.
Dr. Dicus had already had an impressive career as the head of the
department of physics at Tennessee Technological College (Tennessee Tech
University). He was a distinguished scientist and renowned physics teacher.
During the dark days of World War II when the developmental work was being
done on the atomic bomb, Dr. Dicus is said to have sent more physicists
into the Oak
Ridge Laboratories than any other physics teacher in America. However,
Dr. Dicus did not find complete satisfaction in his work in the state university
and decided to devote part of his life to Christian education. Though he
has not yet reached the normal retirement age, he took an early retirement
from Tennessee Tech and came to Florida on a modest salary to serve as
academic dean of the small, struggling Christian college. Through the years
that I worked under Dr. Dicus, he was a great source of strength and inspiration.
As a young teacher, I could go to him for counsel and encouragement. But
I remember brother Dicus as more than a distinguished physicist turned
college dean. I remember him as a disciple of Christ, a man of deep faith,
and a man that expressed that faith in a song. For it was brother Dicus
who both wrote the words and music for the song that is so popular in churches:
“There is beyond the azure blue, a God concealed from human sight,
He tinted skies with heavenly hue, and framed the world with His
great might.
There was a long, long time ago, a God whose voice the prophets
heard;
He is the God that we should know, who speaks from His inspired
Word.
Our God, whose Son upon a tree, a life was willing there to give,
That He from sin might set men free, and evermore with him could
live.”
Whenever I hear a congregation singing these words today, and especially a group of young people, I think of brother Dicus, and a lump comes in my throat. It is a source of spiritual strength to me to know that these great words of faith were written by a distinguished scientist. It is also a gentle reminder of the great debt of gratitude that every generation owes to those who have gone before. Brother Discus died at about 90 years of age. But even though he is gone, he still lives on when we sing: “There is a God...”
—Author not given; via House to House; Heart to Heart