EARTH

Speeding around the sun at 18.5 miles per second, the earth completes one orbit every 365 days, rotating on its axis every 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds.  Its slightly elliptical orbit of almost 93 million miles from the sun provides exactly the right conditions for life to flourish.  Any closer to its star, and the planet’s water would vaporize; any further away, and it would freeze solid. 

Living creatures on earth breathe an atmosphere composed of about 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, with the rest comprised of argon, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and other gases.  This mixture prevents most ultraviolet light from reaching the planet’s surface; without such a screen, life as we know it could not exist. 

The earth boasts a mass of approximately 6x10 ²¹   metric tons and a surface area of about 197 million square miles.  A crust about 21 miles thick lies under the continents; it shrinks to three miles under the oceans.  Beneath the crust stretches a mantle about 1,800 miles deep; below that lies a molten core composed mostly of iron.  This core likely is divided into two parts, an outer, fluid region, and an extremely dense, solid region about 1,500 miles across – all extremely hot.  It is estimated that an electric current constantly flowing in the outer core generates approximately 90 percent of earth’s magnetic field.  This magnetosphere extends about 90 miles above the earth’s surface, trapping rapidly moving charged particles emanating from solar winds.  Without this magnetic shields, all life on earth would perish in a bombardment of deadly cosmic radioactivity.  What a complex, unique marvel is the earth!

AND YET….

Although top scientists are only beginning to understand the sophisticated design of our planet, without the slightest effort God has always fully  “comprehended the vast expanses of the earth” (Job 38:18).  It is He who “suspends the earth over nothing” (Job 26:7) and He who “sits enthroned above the circle of the earth” (Isaiah 40:22).  No wonder the Psalmist exclaims, “How awesome is the Lord Most High, the great King over all the earth!” (Psalm 47:2), for as Jeremiah says,

“GOD MADE THE EARTH BY HIS POWER; HE FOUNDED THE WORLD BY HIS WISDOM.”

(Jeremiah 10:12)

“How Majestic is Thy Name”, 2001.  www.newleafpress.net