03/30/2024 I have heard suchs questions many times, from my children, from my own wonderings, from students past and present. (This is in is the Christian world and the secular school environment). What do I need algebra/geometry for? When will I use math in real life, or in everyday life? I have wondered before at some of the complexity of those topics, but it wasn’t until I gave my life to the Lord, that I started to really appreciate math. As it was always something I had to do, when I was in school, I made myself do it and maybe got to where it was enjoyable sometimes, if I got the answers right :). But I would not let myself really explore or think about it other than mandatory. Certainly, it would have been easy to say math was the favorite subject, but honestly, I always said “PE!” :). There was the potential to get good grades, so I did, but now that I study math (and teach) and tutor, I find that math as a topic itself is worthy of our time. So my goal is to ponder 1 thing in this article, and to follow up with the second point in the next article to publish: So, my pondering for today is “Is Doing Math a Profitable Use of our Time?” ➕

Is Doing Math A Profitable Use For Our Time?

Why of course, now, I would say ‘yes’! Personally, when I was in the first year of college, and fresh on the campus of a new Christian school, I had the time come where I had to choose a major, and I didn’t think of one, because I liked to study everything a little bit. But I had a professor on campus, who thought my grades, and SAT were good (although the grades were, the SAT not as much), but he thought I should study math. Just straight math, so it didn’t mean being a teacher necessarily, but later I would have the ability to become a teacher, if desired. I think that is what he told me. I took it as a direction to do, even though in high school, I asked God to I would do anything but teach and anything but study math. And though I didn’t pray for much, I did pray that prayer in my mind, I remember as a senior. So, when the professor asked me to do that for my major, Professor Mark Cheek, I took it as a sign because I knew I would not have chosen it. I know that is weird reasoning, but that’s where I was. I thought if he figured it could go well, then I should give it a try. I had a good start and because my high school was rigorous, I did have a very firm math foundation, in the sense that I had a ton of practice, and lost of repetition already. 📓📔📒

First Year of College: As I got into the freshman year, I started to become pleased with what I was studying, and to catch on the idea that there are many maths, and that the history behind some of them in the Christian church is quite rich. There are many inventors, philosphers, Church fathers, ministers/priests, Catholic women saints, professors, physicists and astronomers, who have delved into mathematics in some field or area and proved very fruitful results that we glean profit from today! I loved learning about Copernicus, please see my article “Celestial Copernicus – A Man Among the Stars” 🌃https://rebekahsreflections.com/2022/08/14/celestial-copernicus-a-man-among-the-stars/

As I learn about church fathers and math influences like Nicolaus Copernicus, Hildegaard de Bengen, and Einstein, I admire and respect that they devoted themselves to the studying of figuring, calculating, theorizing. Additionally, I’m very happy to have learned about Copernicus especially him being enlightened to the fact that the universe was heliocentric (sun-centered) around the sun instead of around the earth (using math and astronomy). That may seem like a small things, but there were not astronomy tools, computers as we know it, and widely published works everywhere about that sort of thing at that time. In fact, in the view of history, he may have been the only scholar besides one other person to support such a thing. Now, that would be nothing, with the technology, communication, and education we have access to. Back then, such things really were a foundational building of what we know today in science. 😲

Honestly, in my opinion, there are many inteligent people to have come and gone in history, but the most inspired ones *by God, I do consider their intelligence above those of diferrent faiths (not Jesus followers) or the irreligious. I do not think those mathematicians* have the discipline, order, or development that the saints of the past and present can offer. Because we are connected to the head that is Christ, who is only having one head, who is God! ✝️

“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). 💖

It is surely a challenge to approach a subject as intimidating as math to an individual or a group, without them feeling susceptible to mistakes or feeling that they will fail, or feel like “math is just not for them”. But contrarily, I feel like individuals have strengths in many areas and sometimes a person has a great strength in one big area. I would venture that part of the verse above in 1 Corinthians 2:9 is for many of us left to discover whether a little or a lot, some of those “things (yet unseen, yet unheard, yet-not-yet conceived) God hath prepared for them that love Him”. We have many things to learn and our lives so can really be an ongoing blessings to others, whether its first aid, food prep and recipes, mathematics, stories of war in history to learn from the past, theology!, economics, science, etc. When we get to Heaven we will have that chance to study all that we have ever wanted. Who said we have to dread learning at all?! 😲

No one has forced us to believe that learning is limited to school -brick n mortar or otherwise, and we are free in Christ to “do good works, God created in advance for us to do”, in that “whatever we do, whether in word of deed, we do all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the Father through Him, and “do (math 🙂 ) it with all thy might”. 😺

Knowledge can save us and sometimes in dreams, we can have books, ideas, intelligence, inventions revealed to us, to help us know how to help this world, so I hope to do an article on dreams people have had in the past that have led to inventions as we know of them today. Loosely, I can refer to one I know right off the bat, that the sewing machine is one of those inventions that a man had a dream, and then he knew how to create the sewing machine, and that’s been a good help to mankind! 🧵