Nurturing the God Given Love of Learning through an Impromptu STEM Lesson

I miss teaching STEM this year, but parents continue to tell me how that one year of STEM class has made their children more prone to observe nature and make inferences about nature and the way God put the world together and to conduct experiments to test their hypotheses. What joy these stories bring.  

On the way home from school (on 9/27/16), my son said, "It seems like ice melts faster in water than in air even when the temperature of water we drink is typically cooler than air. Is that true? Why?"

When we got home and before I could finish unloading the van, he had already set up an experiment where he observed that an ice cube melted completely in a bowl of cooler water before the same sized ice cube had barely begun to melt in a bowl of air.

So we began the process I love so much of asking questions to figure out why. Once he understood the factors affecting heat transfer coefficient, we considered what his discovery might reveal to us about God and/or spiritual truth. (Yes, I tend to spiritualize everything because God created all things to reveal His glory and because it makes life, discovery, and exploration much more fascinating.)

Then we compared the references to water and air in the Bible and took special note of references to "living water".

In Ephesians 2, the term "air" describes Satan's work of hardening the human heart so it will not melt.

"And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." - Ephesians 2:1-3

Then my son noted that an icy heart would more easily melt if submerged in living water. John 7:38 teaches us that for "he who believes in [Christ], ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water."

When Christ returns as conquering King to throw down the prince of the air, He will come swiftly, just as air molecules move faster than water molecules, and those who believe and possess the life of Christ (the living water) in them will meet Him in the air and live with Him forever. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18) And with all those water molecules in the air reflecting the glorious light of the Son, imagine how splendid that rainbow will be!