Most people, I suspect, are at least peripherally familiar with the great British scientist and mathematician Isaac Newton.  Moreover, most of us, I suspect as well, know that he is remembered for his "discovery" of gravity, a discovery that led humanity to realign nearly everything it had previously believed about the structure and workings of the universe.
     A good deal of this realignment had to do with religion.  During the Middle Ages, the era in Western Europe that preceded the period (generally called the Scientific Revolution) in which Newton made his discovery, the Church (at that time solely Catholic) determined what was right and true.  Few dared challenge it.
     As modern science (which, by the way, most historians believe, found its genesis in the then prevailing belief that because God had made it, the universe was one of rationality and order and therefore amenable to thoughtful investigation), bolstered by the development of instruments such as the microscope and telescope, began to learn more about how the universe worked, however, most intellectuals came to view the Church's authority on such matters as decidedly less credible.  As they saw it, it was the scientific method, developed by Francis Bacon, that now constituted the means by which responsible people should ascertain the inner structure of the cosmos.  Nonetheless, nearly all of these scientists continued to believe in God, and to place him as the center and impetus of creation.
     Newton was no exception.  Writing on page 440 of his famous Principia (translated from its original Latin), the mathematician observed the following:

     "And lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another."

      The way Newton put this is highly instructive.  He allows gravity to be the sovereign force that governs the movements of the stars (the "heavens"), yet notes that it is only able to do so effectively because the Creator (God) had set the stars in a certain way. Although we can argue about how God did so--whether he simply "spoke" it or used natural forces to execute his vision--we come away with an intriguing juxtaposition of divine presence and natural capacities.  It is a juxtaposition in which we see a perfectly balanced picture of supernatural and natural in which to frame our understanding of the universe.  God is there, yet gravity is, too, natural as well as supernatural, both present, both necessary, both contributing, both upholding, both ensuring the existence of the cosmos.