The Mice in the Piano
Pastor Joseph Clark
August 12, 2026
“He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist.”
—Saint Augustine
“Whoever acknowledges Me before others, I will also acknowledge before My Father in heaven. But whoever disowns Me before others, I will disown before My Father in heaven.”
—Matthew 10:32–33
The Mice in the Piano
Once upon a time, there were two little mice. They were brothers, and they had lived their entire lives inside a piano. It was the only world they had ever known.
Their parents and siblings had died of old age, leaving the two brothers as the last members of their family. They spent their days exploring their strange little world and listening in wonder to the beautiful music that constantly filled the piano.
They could not see where the music came from.
Their parents had taught them that the music was produced by a great and mysterious being who lived beyond their understanding—the one who played the piano.
The two mice loved to think about this great player. They talked about him, wondered about him, and delighted in the beautiful music he produced.
Then, one day, one of the mice went exploring.
When he returned, he was thoughtful and unusually serious.
“There is no great player,” he told his brother. “It is all a myth. I have seen the inside of this piano. The music is produced by wires, hammers, strings, and mechanisms. I have seen them with my own eyes!”
The brothers abandoned their belief in the great player.
They were convinced that they had finally discovered the truth. They understood the mechanisms of the piano, and therefore they believed they had explained away the musician.
They examined the wires, hammers, strings, and mechanical workings repeatedly. The more they learned about how the piano worked, the more confident they became that there was no need to believe in a player.
But they had overlooked something very important.
Knowing how the piano works does not explain who is playing it.
And so, while the two mice congratulated themselves on their newfound wisdom, the great player continued to play.
The mice simply could not see him.
The Limits of Human Understanding
There is an important lesson in this little story.
Human beings are intelligent. We have learned extraordinary things about the universe. We have explored the depths of the oceans, walked on the moon, examined the microscopic world, mapped the human genome, and discovered astonishing laws governing the physical universe.
But our ability to understand something does not mean that we understand everything.
The Bible repeatedly reminds us that humility is essential when approaching God.
Jesus said:
“Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
—Matthew 18:3
He also said:
“Let the little children come to Me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
—Matthew 19:14
And again:
“Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
—Luke 18:17
Jesus is not telling us to abandon reason or become intellectually childish. Rather, He is calling us to humility, trust, and dependence upon God.
Scripture says:
“Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
—Matthew 18:4
The Christian life begins with recognizing that God is God—and we are not.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
—Ephesians 2:8
And:
“The righteous shall live by faith.”
—Romans 1:17
Faith is not a rejection of reason. Faith recognizes that human reason has limits.
Living in a Skeptical Age
In 1897, Francis Pharcellus Church wrote his famous response to eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon concerning her question about Santa Claus. Church observed that people can become skeptical of anything they cannot see or fully comprehend.
Although Church was writing about Santa Claus—not God—the broader observation is worth considering.
We live in an age that often treats what can be measured as though it were the only thing that can be real.
But there are many things we accept as real without seeing them directly.
We cannot see gravity.
We cannot see thoughts.
We cannot see love.
We cannot see electricity itself.
Yet we observe their effects.
Likewise, Christians believe that although God cannot be placed under a microscope or reduced to a laboratory experiment, His existence can be considered through the evidence of creation, reason, morality, human consciousness, history, and ultimately the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The fact that we cannot see God with our physical eyes does not prove that God does not exist.
The mice could not see the piano player either.
That did not mean he wasn't there.
When People Mock Our Faith
A close friend of mine, an Archbishop, once told me a humorous story from his childhood.
He had been at a park with his mother when he ran over excitedly and told her that the sun was actually a star and that the stars in the sky were also suns.
His mother, apparently overwhelmed by the complexity of the information, responded with a blunt declaration that, in essence, the sun was the sun and the stars were the stars—and that was the end of the discussion!
Sometimes we can become uncomfortable when someone challenges what we believe.
That is particularly true when people we respect dismiss Christianity as foolishness.
Richard Dawkins, Woody Allen, Isaac Asimov, Mark Twain, Carl Sagan, and many others have expressed skepticism toward Christianity or belief in God.
But Christians should not respond with anger or hatred.
We should respond with grace.
Forgive them. Pray for them. Love them. And share the Gospel with them.
The Apostle Peter instructed Christians:
“Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
—1 Peter 3:15
That is an important distinction.
We are called to defend the faith, but we are not called to be quarrelsome.
Jesus said:
“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”
—Matthew 10:14
And He warned:
“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls before swine.”
—Matthew 7:6
There comes a time when we must recognize that arguing louder will not make someone believe.
Our responsibility is to faithfully proclaim Christ.
The Holy Spirit is responsible for changing hearts.
What About Suffering?
One of the most common objections to belief in God is the existence of suffering.
People ask:
“How can I believe in a loving God when there is so much suffering in the world?”
This is a serious question, and Christians should never dismiss it with a shallow answer.
The Bible itself contains people crying out to God in the midst of suffering. Job asked difficult questions. David cried out in the Psalms. Even Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.
Christianity does not pretend that suffering is imaginary.
Instead, Christianity tells us that suffering exists in a fallen world and that God entered that suffering Himself through Jesus Christ.
The cross is Christianity's answer to the claim that God is indifferent to human suffering.
God did not remain distant from our pain.
He entered our world.
He suffered.
He died.
And He rose again.
The Apostle Paul writes:
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
—Romans 8:18
C.S. Lewis famously described pain as God's “megaphone” to a deaf world.
Suffering does not prove that God does not exist. For many people, suffering instead becomes the very circumstance that drives them to ask the deepest questions about meaning, morality, mortality, and God.
What About Hell?
Another question frequently asked is:
“How can a loving God send people to Hell?”
The Christian answer begins with the extraordinary love of God.
Jesus said:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
—John 3:16
God offers salvation freely through Christ.
The Gospel is not a message that God delights in condemning people. It is a message that God has provided a way of salvation.
Jesus came to seek and save the lost.
The seriousness of judgment is precisely what makes the offer of salvation so important.
God does not force anyone to love Him.
The Gospel calls us to repent, believe, and receive the grace of God.
Faith and the Evidence of Creation
The universe raises enormous questions.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why does the universe possess order?
Why are the laws of nature intelligible?
Why does human consciousness exist?
Why do human beings possess an awareness of moral obligation?
Science can investigate how many things work. But questions concerning ultimate meaning and purpose extend beyond the laboratory.
The Christian does not believe that science is the enemy of faith.
Quite the opposite.
The universe is intelligible because Christians believe it was created by an intelligent God.
The laws of nature can be investigated because Christians believe those laws reflect an ordered creation.
The human capacity to reason can be used to explore the universe because Christians believe human beings were created by God.
Science can tell us much about the mechanisms of the piano.
But science alone cannot answer the question:
Who is playing the music?
Believers in the Scientific Community
Christianity has never belonged exclusively to the uneducated or uninformed.
Throughout history, many highly accomplished scientists have believed in God.
Among them are figures such as:
Isaac Newton, whose work transformed physics and mathematics.
James Clerk Maxwell, one of the great figures in electromagnetic theory.
Gregor Mendel, whose experiments established foundational principles of genetics and who was also an Augustinian friar.
Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest and physicist whose work on an expanding universe helped establish the foundation of what became known as Big Bang cosmology.
Francis Collins, physician-geneticist and former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, who has publicly identified as a Christian.
Charles Townes, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of the maser and co-inventor of the laser, who was an openly religious Christian.
These examples do not prove Christianity simply because these scientists believed.
But they do demonstrate something important:
Faith in God is not incompatible with intellectual achievement.
A person does not have to abandon intelligence in order to believe in God.
Nor does becoming a Christian require someone to stop asking questions.
Christians should welcome honest questions.
The Problem With the Piano Mice
The two mice made a fundamental mistake.
They confused an explanation of the mechanism with an explanation of the ultimate cause.
They discovered the wires.
They discovered the hammers.
They discovered the strings.
They discovered the machinery.
And then they concluded:
“Therefore, there is no piano player.”
But that conclusion did not logically follow from their discovery.
In fact, their discovery of the piano's complexity could have led them to ask an entirely different question:
Who designed this?
And that is the question we must ultimately ask about our universe.
Where did everything come from?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why does the universe operate according to discoverable laws?
Why does consciousness exist?
Why do we have an innate sense that some things are genuinely right and others genuinely wrong?
And perhaps the greatest question of all:
Who are we, and why are we here?
The Christian answer is that we are creatures made by our Creator.
We are not accidents without purpose.
We were created by God, for God, and ultimately for relationship with Him.
We Are the Mice
There is another lesson in the story that we must not miss.
Perhaps the greatest danger is not being ignorant.
Perhaps it is believing that we know everything.
We are the mice in the piano.
We live inside a universe vastly larger and more complicated than our minds can fully comprehend.
We see only a fraction of reality.
We understand only a fraction of what exists.
And yet we sometimes look at the small portion we understand and confidently declare that nothing exists beyond it.
The Bible reminds us:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the LORD.”
—Isaiah 55:8
And:
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!”
—Romans 11:33
The proper response to a God who is greater than our understanding is not arrogance.
It is humility.
It is worship.
It is faith.
The Music Continues
The two mice eventually stopped believing in the piano player.
They became convinced that they had explained everything.
But outside their tiny world, the musician continued to play.
The music never stopped.
The fact that they could not see him did not mean he was absent.
And perhaps that is where many people find themselves today.
They have examined the mechanisms of the universe.
They have learned about physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and astronomy.
They have become fascinated by the machinery.
But they have never stopped to ask whether there is a Creator behind it all.
The Christian message is that there is.
His name is Jesus Christ.
He is not merely an idea, a philosophy, or a comforting story.
He is the Son of God who entered human history, died for our sins, and rose from the grave.
And He calls every one of us to respond.
Jesus said:
“Whoever acknowledges Me before others, I will also acknowledge before My Father in heaven.”
—Matthew 10:32
The question is not merely whether we believe that God exists.
The deeper question is:
What will we do with Jesus Christ?
The piano is playing.
The music is all around us.
The question is whether we will remain convinced that there is nothing beyond the wires and hammers—or whether we will humble ourselves, listen carefully, and seek the One who is playing the music.
Do not be so certain that you have explained the piano that you never look for the Player.
—Pastor Joseph Clark
The Mice in the Piano
Pastor Joseph Clark
August 12, 2026
“He who denies the existence of God, has some reason for wishing that God did not exist.”
—Saint Augustine
“Whoever acknowledges Me before others, I will also acknowledge before My Father in heaven. But whoever disowns Me before others, I will disown before My Father in heaven.”
—Matthew 10:32–33
The Mice in the Piano
Once upon a time, there were two little mice. They were brothers, and they had lived their entire lives inside a piano. It was the only world they had ever known.
Their parents and siblings had died of old age, leaving the two brothers as the last members of their family. They spent their days exploring their strange little world and listening in wonder to the beautiful music that constantly filled the piano.
They could not see where the music came from.
Their parents had taught them that the music was produced by a great and mysterious being who lived beyond their understanding—the one who played the piano.
The two mice loved to think about this great player. They talked about him, wondered about him, and delighted in the beautiful music he produced.
Then, one day, one of the mice went exploring.
When he returned, he was thoughtful and unusually serious.
“There is no great player,” he told his brother. “It is all a myth. I have seen the inside of this piano. The music is produced by wires, hammers, strings, and mechanisms. I have seen them with my own eyes!”
The brothers abandoned their belief in the great player.
They were convinced that they had finally discovered the truth. They understood the mechanisms of the piano, and therefore they believed they had explained away the musician.
They examined the wires, hammers, strings, and mechanical workings repeatedly. The more they learned about how the piano worked, the more confident they became that there was no need to believe in a player.
But they had overlooked something very important.
Knowing how the piano works does not explain who is playing it.
And so, while the two mice congratulated themselves on their newfound wisdom, the great player continued to play.
The mice simply could not see him.
The Limits of Human Understanding
There is an important lesson in this little story.
Human beings are intelligent. We have learned extraordinary things about the universe. We have explored the depths of the oceans, walked on the moon, examined the microscopic world, mapped the human genome, and discovered astonishing laws governing the physical universe.
But our ability to understand something does not mean that we understand everything.
The Bible repeatedly reminds us that humility is essential when approaching God.
Jesus said:
“Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
—Matthew 18:3
He also said:
“Let the little children come to Me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”
—Matthew 19:14
And again:
“Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
—Luke 18:17
Jesus is not telling us to abandon reason or become intellectually childish. Rather, He is calling us to humility, trust, and dependence upon God.
Scripture says:
“Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
—Matthew 18:4
The Christian life begins with recognizing that God is God—and we are not.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.”
—Ephesians 2:8
And:
“The righteous shall live by faith.”
—Romans 1:17
Faith is not a rejection of reason. Faith recognizes that human reason has limits.
Living in a Skeptical Age
In 1897, Francis Pharcellus Church wrote his famous response to eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon concerning her question about Santa Claus. Church observed that people can become skeptical of anything they cannot see or fully comprehend.
Although Church was writing about Santa Claus—not God—the broader observation is worth considering.
We live in an age that often treats what can be measured as though it were the only thing that can be real.
But there are many things we accept as real without seeing them directly.
We cannot see gravity.
We cannot see thoughts.
We cannot see love.
We cannot see electricity itself.
Yet we observe their effects.
Likewise, Christians believe that although God cannot be placed under a microscope or reduced to a laboratory experiment, His existence can be considered through the evidence of creation, reason, morality, human consciousness, history, and ultimately the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The fact that we cannot see God with our physical eyes does not prove that God does not exist.
The mice could not see the piano player either.
That did not mean he wasn't there.
When People Mock Our Faith
A close friend of mine, an Archbishop, once told me a humorous story from his childhood.
He had been at a park with his mother when he ran over excitedly and told her that the sun was actually a star and that the stars in the sky were also suns.
His mother, apparently overwhelmed by the complexity of the information, responded with a blunt declaration that, in essence, the sun was the sun and the stars were the stars—and that was the end of the discussion!
Sometimes we can become uncomfortable when someone challenges what we believe.
That is particularly true when people we respect dismiss Christianity as foolishness.
Richard Dawkins, Woody Allen, Isaac Asimov, Mark Twain, Carl Sagan, and many others have expressed skepticism toward Christianity or belief in God.
But Christians should not respond with anger or hatred.
We should respond with grace.
Forgive them. Pray for them. Love them. And share the Gospel with them.
The Apostle Peter instructed Christians:
“Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”
—1 Peter 3:15
That is an important distinction.
We are called to defend the faith, but we are not called to be quarrelsome.
Jesus said:
“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”
—Matthew 10:14
And He warned:
“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls before swine.”
—Matthew 7:6
There comes a time when we must recognize that arguing louder will not make someone believe.
Our responsibility is to faithfully proclaim Christ.
The Holy Spirit is responsible for changing hearts.
What About Suffering?
One of the most common objections to belief in God is the existence of suffering.
People ask:
“How can I believe in a loving God when there is so much suffering in the world?”
This is a serious question, and Christians should never dismiss it with a shallow answer.
The Bible itself contains people crying out to God in the midst of suffering. Job asked difficult questions. David cried out in the Psalms. Even Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.
Christianity does not pretend that suffering is imaginary.
Instead, Christianity tells us that suffering exists in a fallen world and that God entered that suffering Himself through Jesus Christ.
The cross is Christianity's answer to the claim that God is indifferent to human suffering.
God did not remain distant from our pain.
He entered our world.
He suffered.
He died.
And He rose again.
The Apostle Paul writes:
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
—Romans 8:18
C.S. Lewis famously described pain as God's “megaphone” to a deaf world.
Suffering does not prove that God does not exist. For many people, suffering instead becomes the very circumstance that drives them to ask the deepest questions about meaning, morality, mortality, and God.
What About Hell?
Another question frequently asked is:
“How can a loving God send people to Hell?”
The Christian answer begins with the extraordinary love of God.
Jesus said:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”
—John 3:16
God offers salvation freely through Christ.
The Gospel is not a message that God delights in condemning people. It is a message that God has provided a way of salvation.
Jesus came to seek and save the lost.
The seriousness of judgment is precisely what makes the offer of salvation so important.
God does not force anyone to love Him.
The Gospel calls us to repent, believe, and receive the grace of God.
Faith and the Evidence of Creation
The universe raises enormous questions.
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why does the universe possess order?
Why are the laws of nature intelligible?
Why does human consciousness exist?
Why do human beings possess an awareness of moral obligation?
Science can investigate how many things work. But questions concerning ultimate meaning and purpose extend beyond the laboratory.
The Christian does not believe that science is the enemy of faith.
Quite the opposite.
The universe is intelligible because Christians believe it was created by an intelligent God.
The laws of nature can be investigated because Christians believe those laws reflect an ordered creation.
The human capacity to reason can be used to explore the universe because Christians believe human beings were created by God.
Science can tell us much about the mechanisms of the piano.
But science alone cannot answer the question:
Who is playing the music?
Believers in the Scientific Community
Christianity has never belonged exclusively to the uneducated or uninformed.
Throughout history, many highly accomplished scientists have believed in God.
Among them are figures such as:
Isaac Newton, whose work transformed physics and mathematics.
James Clerk Maxwell, one of the great figures in electromagnetic theory.
Gregor Mendel, whose experiments established foundational principles of genetics and who was also an Augustinian friar.
Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest and physicist whose work on an expanding universe helped establish the foundation of what became known as Big Bang cosmology.
Francis Collins, physician-geneticist and former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, who has publicly identified as a Christian.
Charles Townes, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of the maser and co-inventor of the laser, who was an openly religious Christian.
These examples do not prove Christianity simply because these scientists believed.
But they do demonstrate something important:
Faith in God is not incompatible with intellectual achievement.
A person does not have to abandon intelligence in order to believe in God.
Nor does becoming a Christian require someone to stop asking questions.
Christians should welcome honest questions.
The Problem With the Piano Mice
The two mice made a fundamental mistake.
They confused an explanation of the mechanism with an explanation of the ultimate cause.
They discovered the wires.
They discovered the hammers.
They discovered the strings.
They discovered the machinery.
And then they concluded:
“Therefore, there is no piano player.”
But that conclusion did not logically follow from their discovery.
In fact, their discovery of the piano's complexity could have led them to ask an entirely different question:
Who designed this?
And that is the question we must ultimately ask about our universe.
Where did everything come from?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
Why does the universe operate according to discoverable laws?
Why does consciousness exist?
Why do we have an innate sense that some things are genuinely right and others genuinely wrong?
And perhaps the greatest question of all:
Who are we, and why are we here?
The Christian answer is that we are creatures made by our Creator.
We are not accidents without purpose.
We were created by God, for God, and ultimately for relationship with Him.
We Are the Mice
There is another lesson in the story that we must not miss.
Perhaps the greatest danger is not being ignorant.
Perhaps it is believing that we know everything.
We are the mice in the piano.
We live inside a universe vastly larger and more complicated than our minds can fully comprehend.
We see only a fraction of reality.
We understand only a fraction of what exists.
And yet we sometimes look at the small portion we understand and confidently declare that nothing exists beyond it.
The Bible reminds us:
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, declares the LORD.”
—Isaiah 55:8
And:
“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!”
—Romans 11:33
The proper response to a God who is greater than our understanding is not arrogance.
It is humility.
It is worship.
It is faith.
The Music Continues
The two mice eventually stopped believing in the piano player.
They became convinced that they had explained everything.
But outside their tiny world, the musician continued to play.
The music never stopped.
The fact that they could not see him did not mean he was absent.
And perhaps that is where many people find themselves today.
They have examined the mechanisms of the universe.
They have learned about physics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, and astronomy.
They have become fascinated by the machinery.
But they have never stopped to ask whether there is a Creator behind it all.
The Christian message is that there is.
His name is Jesus Christ.
He is not merely an idea, a philosophy, or a comforting story.
He is the Son of God who entered human history, died for our sins, and rose from the grave.
And He calls every one of us to respond.
Jesus said:
“Whoever acknowledges Me before others, I will also acknowledge before My Father in heaven.”
—Matthew 10:32
The question is not merely whether we believe that God exists.
The deeper question is:
What will we do with Jesus Christ?
The piano is playing.
The music is all around us.
The question is whether we will remain convinced that there is nothing beyond the wires and hammers—or whether we will humble ourselves, listen carefully, and seek the One who is playing the music.
Do not be so certain that you have explained the piano that you never look for the Player.
—Pastor Joseph Clark
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