Praise and Pasteur

One of my favorite praise songs is "Better is One Day." I love to sing that song, always cranking up the sound when it comes on my radio or ipod. I like that it is based on Scripture, specifically Psalm 84:10, "Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked." While we may not sing the second half of the verse, it still has a great image attached to it.

When I was first studying French (and barely knew anything), I heard a devotional study given by one of the advanced students in my language program. Part of our language study included these devotional studies presented in the mornings, and the young missionary that taught on this verse was a medical doctor heading to Niger, West Africa. He had prepared rudimentary drawings to illustrate his presentation, which greatly helped me to follow along, since I didn't understand the French words he was using. But I got enough of the story that day to look it up later in English on the internet.

Louis Pasteur is perhaps most recognized as the creator of "pasteurized" milk, a process which bears his name due to his microbiological breakthroughs that purified milk and wine from the bacteria that once caused sickness. But did you know that he was the first person to use a rabies vaccine to save a human life? Another French scientist developed the vaccine itself, which had only been tested on 11 dogs, when a 9 year old boy was mauled by a rabid dog and was facing death. Pasteur, not a medical doctor, chose to try the vaccine on the little boy, Joseph Meister, in spite of the prosecution he would face, in a wild attempt to save the boy's life. The vaccine was a success, and Pasteur was hailed as a hero (avoiding the charges he would have faced for practicing medicine without a license).

Here's the best part of the story: Joseph Meister, surely out of a sense of gratitude, became the caretaker and doorman of the Pasteur Institute, which opened just a few years after Joseph was saved by the new vaccine. He remained in the employ of the Pasteur Institute until his death. He chose to serve the man who had saved him!

Psalm 84:10, "Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.