The Seed Crystal

In undergraduate chemistry labs across the country, professors demonstrate something that never fails to draw gasps. They prepare a supersaturated solution of sodium acetate — a clear liquid that looks like ordinary water but holds far more dissolved material than it can stably contain. It sits there, restless and formless, waiting.

Then the professor drops in a single tiny crystal, no larger than a grain of sand.

From that one point of contact, crystalline structures race outward in every direction. Within seconds, the entire beaker transforms from a chaotic, unstable liquid into an organized, solid crystalline mass. The molecules were always there. They simply needed something to organize around.

Proverbs 16:3 says, "Commit your works to the LORD, and your thoughts will be established." That Hebrew word for "commit" — galal — literally means to roll something onto another, the way you would roll a heavy stone off your shoulders and onto solid ground.