My First Blog

I have discovered that all the speakers here at AiG are blogging except me, and I am starting to feel guilty about it. So this is my first effort at blogging. My problem is that I love to speak but I hate to write. Speaking comes easily to me, but I find writing to be slow and painful. My wife (who is an excellent writer) advises me to write the same way I speak. But that isn’t going to work, is it? For starters, what do I do with my outrageous sense of humor? I may have to sit on that a bit.

One problem I won’t have is finding something to write about. When you get to be my age, you have had a lot of experiences in life and tend to become a raconteur. But I don’t just want to write about the past. Working here at the Creation Museum provides me with new and interesting experiences every, day and I will certainly try to keep you posted on some of these. In general, I will try to share my take on things related to creation, evolution, science, and theology. For my first blog, I have decided to write on this topic:

Retirement

I remember when I decided to retire in the year 2000, after 34 years on the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine; my colleagues asked me what I was going to do in my retirement. I told them that I was going to do absolutely nothing, and that I wouldn’t even start that until afternoon. Well that turned out to be nowhere near as enjoyable as I thought it would be, and thanks be to God, it didn’t last very long. You see, shortly after I retired, I got a life-changing phone call from Ken Ham.

Somehow, Ken had heard about my retirement and invited me to work for Answers in Genesis and to be part of the Creation Museum, which at the time was still in the planning stages. At first, I worked part-time traveling and speaking for Answers in Genesis out of St. Louis. But how was I to know that working part-time for Ken meant working 23 hours a day? After a few years of that, I figured I might as well go for the extra hour and work full-time. That involved selling my home in St. Louis, leaving my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren behind (they lived 10 minutes from my home), and moving to Petersburg, Kentucky.

Looking back, I really enjoyed all the years I spent on the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine. There I learned far more from my wonderful colleagues and students than I ever did from attending college and graduate school. I enjoyed a measure of success in both my teaching and my research. But I truly believe that all my years in science, education, and research were meant by God to prepare me for what I do now with Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum.

I have been told that the Bible doesn’t say anything about retirement, but we have to be careful here—the Bible doesn’t say anything about vacations either. Still, I have discovered that, for me, the secret to a happy retirement is to keep working as long as I am able. Some Christians seem to go through life worrying about what God’s plan is for their life, not realizing that they are already experiencing it. All God-pleasing work in the service of our family and our fellow man is God’s plan for us. I am just delighted that the Lord has saved the best for the last—both in this life and the next.