Mark J. Nielsen

MARKJ. NIELSEN {[email protected]} is professor of mathematics and associate dean of the College of Science at the University of Idaho. He serves as bishop of the Moscow University Second Ward but aspires to some day return to his former calling as Primary pianist. He and his wife, Barbara Dunn Nielsen, first met in a BYU Honors Program course taught in part by Dialogue founder Eugene England, who will always be a role model to both of them. Their four children (Jonathan Mark, Christopher Joel, Rebekah Marie, and Hannah Elisabeth) range in age from twentytwo to nine.

“That Which Surpasses All Understanding”: The Limitations of Human Thought

Articles/Essays – Volume 42, No. 3

I remember those verses striking a powerful chord within me when I read them on a bright autumn day in 1980. I was then in the first few months of my LDS mission in central Virginia. But reading those words took my mind and emotions back to the desert mountains of western Utah earlier that year. A friend and I had taken a quick camping trip to collect fossils in that remote area; and something in the desert sun, the bare exposure of earth, and the surrounding evidence of unimaginably ancient life produced a feeling so strong that I recognized it immediately when I later stumbled on that passage of scripture. I couldn’t then put my finger on the exact meaning of the emotion—something about the smallness of our place in the universe and our inability to understand it all. It was as powerful as any religious feeling I had ever had, and its duplication at reading the opening of Ecclesiastes nearly brought me to tears. I read the remainder of the book eagerly, naively hoping to find its resolution.