In 1999, Time magazine called him the “Man of the Century” because he changed science forever.

In 1905, nearly 100 years earlier, he was a 26-year-old technical officer in a Swiss patent office. He produced three papers that created a new branch of physics. For his first paper, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1921.

Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879 and attended school in Switzerland, where he became a citizen in 1905. When the Nazis seized his property in Germany in 1933, Einstein immigrated to America, accepted a faculty position in Princeton, N.J., and in 1940, became an American citizen.

In his later years, one author described him as a “kindly, absent-minded professor with a wild halo of hair and piercing eyes.”  His absent-mindedness is illustrated by a story about Einstein traveling on a train one day from his work at Princeton.

The conductor came down the aisle punching the tickets of each passenger. When he came to Einstein, Einstein reached in his vest pocket and couldn’t find his ticket. The brilliant scientist looked in his other pocket, and it wasn’t there. So he looked in his briefcase and couldn’t find it, and was it wasn’t in the seat by him.

“Dr. Einstein, I know who you are,” the conductor said, “We all know who you are. I’m sure you bought a ticket. Don’t worry about it.”  Einstein nodded appreciatively, and the conductor continued down the aisle punching tickets.

Just as the conductor was about to move to the next car, he turned around and saw the famous physicist on his hands and knees looking under his seat for his ticket. Rushing back to Einstein, the conductor told him, “Dr. Einstein, don’t worry. I know who you are. No problem. You don’t need a ticket. I’m sure you bought one.”

To which the white-haired professor replied, “Young man, I too know who I am. What I don’t know is where I’m going.”

Like this brilliant atomic scientist who needed to know where he was going, each of us should ask ourselves, “Do I know where I’m going?” This question needs to be answered spiritually speaking, too.

The Bible says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12 NKJ). Jesus said there is a way that leads to destruction and another way that leads to everlasting life.

How do we know if we are going the right way? Jesus simply says, “I am the way, Follow me.”

Albert Einstein believed in a “God who reveals Himself in the harmony of all that exists” and that searching for God’s design was “the source of all true art and science.”

God knows who we are and everything about us. We will find Him when we search for Him with all of heart.