SUN

It may look like a tiny eyeball peering through the sky’s backyard fence, but our sun has a volume 1.3 million times that of the earth and accounts for 99.8 percent of the total mass of the solar system.  It looks so small because we’re in orbit at a distance of nearly 90 million miles.  Good thing we’re that far away too.  If you dared to touch it, you’d instantly vaporize from its surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit – chilly by comparison to the solar core, which burns at an impossible 27 million degrees.  The sun continually turns hydrogen into helium through the process of fusion, converting 4million tons of matter into energy every second.

Astronomers consider the sun to be an average star in mass, size and brightness, and say that if it continued on an average course, it would eventually become a red giant, engulf Mercury and Venus, blow away the earth’s atmosphere and boil its oceans.  In the end it would turn into a white dwarf star – a solid ball about the size of earth, with a density 50,000 times that of water, perhaps covered by a thin layer of ice and an atmosphere a few yards thick.  But don’t be too alarmed; scientists figure such a catastrophe won’t happen for a very, very long time. 

Light from the sun makes possible all life on earth.  When we burn wood or coal, we’re actually releasing stored energy from the sun.  And more than light reaches us from our star.  Solar winds – charged particles continually flowing from the sun’s corona – move through space at speeds of more than 400 miles per second, reaching at least to the orbit of Neptune.  When gigantic magnetic storms on the sun (some measuring 31,000 miles across) eject strong solar winds toward earth, they produce spectacular “Northern Lights” displays on some parts of our planet through interaction with earth’s atmosphere.  Nothing mankind has conceieved can rival the sun.

AND YET…

Knowing that humans would be tempted to worship the sun He created, God called it merely a “greater light to govern the day” (Genesis 1:16).  The sun may be mighty, but when the Lord orders it to retreat, it hustles backwards (Isaiah 38:8).  Even if He should command it to stop shining, it would instantly go black (Job 9:7).  God uses the power of the sun to strengthen us, so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting men may know there is none besides Him.

“I AM THE LORD, AND THERE IS NO OTHER. I FORM THE LIGHT AND CREATE DARKNESS, I BRING PROSPERITY AND CREATE DISASTER; I, THE LORD, DO ALL THESE THINGS.” (Isaiah 45:6-7)

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