Thursday 18 May 2023

It is cold in the early morning while walking Luke, cold enough to make my bare hands tingle. The sun is just beginning to shine through the trees, and I know warmth is coming.

What is this thing in the sky we call the “Sun?” Scientifically we know it as some giant burning ball of hydrogen and helium. Astronomically, it is categorized as an “ordinary star”, the center of our little solar system, around which orbit the “known” planets. We know, with all our God-given abilities to measure and understand, that the sun is massive compared to us, as in this image of comparative size (not distance):

Despite how big our problems and circumstances are to each of us, we are each very small at the scale of our solar system. Yet our earth is so large compared to each of us that we cannot even sense our own rotation, our own orbit through time and space. Instead, our earth, our footing, feels ‘fixed’ to us, so the sun appears to rise, traverse the sky, and set.

Our God-given abilities to measure also inform us that our little earth is about 93 million miles from the sun. That’s so far away that light itself, at the speed which we think it has, takes over 8 minutes to reach us from the sun. The light and heat, the energy we receive from the sun is already in its past.

It is so bright that we can’t look at it directly, yet we are perfectly positioned by God to receive everything the sun has for us without burning up or freezing. The power of the sun drives our ocean currents, tides, weather, and every bit of the food we consume.

Thank you, Lord God.