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
 

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