And watch the sun set.
The sun isn’t really “setting,” of course. Relative to the
earth, the sun isn’t moving at all. It’s the earth that’s moving, rotating,
revolving…
Can you feel it?
Can you feel the earth below you gently, slowly turning away
from the sun as the earth spins on its axis?
Being somewhere where you can watch the sun set makes it a
little easier, but perhaps – if you concentrate hard enough – you can even feel
the earth spinning beneath you right now.
It’s remarkable that something as big as the earth can be
moving like that… and moving quite fast, actually. About a thousand miles per
hour. The earth is 25,000 miles in diameter, and we cover that distance every
24 hours. (Actually, given our latitude, it’s not quite 25,000 miles, but close
enough.) In 24 hours, the earth will have completed one rotation, and we’ll
have travelled almost 25,000 miles…at a thousand miles per hour.
Can you feel it?
If you can watch the sun set… Before the sun disappears below
the horizon, consider that – as big as the earth is – the sun is thousands of
times bigger.
The earth, as big as it is, is just one tiny piece of debris
– just a tiny little crumb, a speck – caught in the swirl of the sun’s gravity.
There is other debris – other planets – some much bigger than earth, all
swirling around and around.
This is our galaxy.
Imagine that there are other fields – billions of them – each
one with its own millions of kitchen sinks.
This is our universe.
And all the water in all these sinks in all these fields has
been swirling and swirling for a long
time. Billions and billions of years.
And the energy that keeps all this water in all the sinks in
all the fields swirling around and around – that energy – we know as God.
And it is good.
Soon after you watch the sun set, you will see other suns
shining. They are much farther away, so they appear only as pinpricks of light
in a black sky.
Even if you are in a remote location far from other sources
of light, all the stars you can see are only a tiny fraction of all the stars
in our galaxy.
And then there’s all the stars in all the other galaxies.
This patch is the Great Galaxy of Andromeda, also known as
M31.
Like our own Milky Way Galaxy, the Great Galaxy of Andromeda
contains millions upon millions of stars. The Great Galaxy of Andromeda is over
2 million light-years away. It is the most distant thing in the universe that
you can see with the naked eye.
Do you know how fast light travels? If you turn on a
flashlight, a person a mile away (if the light is bright enough) sees the light
instantly.
Light travels at 180,000 miles per second. If you could shine
your flashlight and have the beam of light bend around the earth, it would
travel around the earth seven times in one second.
The Great Galaxy of Andromeda is so far away, that light from
that galaxy takes two million years, travelling through space, to reach us. And
because that light takes two million years to reach us, what we are seeing is
actually what the Great Galaxy of Andromeda looked like two million years ago.
Looking up at the Great Galaxy of Andromeda is looking back
in time two million years.
One more fact: of all the millions of galaxies in the
universe, the Great Galaxy of Andromeda is the closest one to us. The Great
Galaxy of Andromeda is two million light years away, but that’s nothing
compared to what scientists have seen looking through the world’s most powerful
telescopes. These telescopes have allowed them to gaze at galaxies that are 13 billion light years away.
That’s looking back in time 13 billion years.
And the awesome, creative power responsible for this
unfathomably wonderful, incredibly vast universe, we know as God.
It’s amazing how watching the sun set and the stars come out
puts things in perspective.
Oh, we get worked up over so many things here on earth. And
so many of the things we get so worked up over aren’t the things we should be getting worked up over.
The traffic makes us late for work. An exam is coming up that
we’re not prepared for. The roof is leaking. Again. The air conditioner is broken. The plumbing needs repairs.
The car needs a new transmission.
These are issues that demand our attention. As soon as we
take care of one issue, there’s another one. There’s always another issue to be dealt with.
For billions of years, God has kept this universe running. Billions of years. None of our problems
– not even the big ones – is going to change that.
And yes, there are big problems; challenges even bigger than
the ones I’ve already mentioned. A cancer diagnosis. The death of a loved one.
The loss of a job, and possibly one’s home. The need to move to a new city.
But even the big challenges can be faced with a minimum level
of anxiety if we remember just how much bigger God is than anything we will
ever have to deal with.
The Bible has many teachings and commands. Do you know what
the most repeated command in the Bible is?
The number one most repeated command in the Bible is: DO NOT
FEAR. Do not worry. Do not be anxious.
“Do not worry about your life,” Jesus said. “Do not worry
about what you will eat, or about your body, or about what you will wear.”
Sounds like he’s talking to us, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t worry about their body, or about
what they will wear?
Jesus says, “Don’t worry about these things… Look at the
birds of the air. Look at the lilies of the field… God takes care of them; so
surely God will take care of you.”
Perhaps today Jesus would add, “Look at the stars and the
galaxies… God’s been taking care of them for billions and billions of years,
without fail…”
In his second letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul
mentions how he has been flogged, whipped, beaten, and stoned. Three times he
was in a shipwreck; once he found himself adrift on the sea. He says, “I’ve
encountered danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people,
danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at
sea… through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food,
cold, and naked. And, I’m under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all
the churches” (2 Corinthians 11:23-28).
It’s certainly understandable that a person in his situation
would experience a little anxiety.
The Christians in Philippi, meanwhile, were facing many
difficulties. Paul couldn’t come to them, because he himself was in prison at
the time. That would certainly seem to be a cause for anxiety!
“I have learned how to be content no matter what. I know what
it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all
circumstances I have learned the secret
of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I
can do alll things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4: 11-13).
“I have learned to be
content,” Paul says. I think Paul would like what the Buddhists teach, that
the situations we find ourselves in are never good or bad in
themselves. They just are. Whether
they are good or bad depends on how we react to them.
Finding contenment in all circumstances does take practice as
we learn to take the steps we need to take, and trust the rest to God.
“I have learned the secret,” Paul says. The secret of being content, the
secret of being at peace, no matter what the circumstances.
What is that secret? I think I’ve learned a lot over the
years, but I also know I still have a lot to learn. I am still working on
learning the secret of being content. I still worry, I still get anxious…
But every day I figure out just a little bit more of that
secret. Every day I become just a little more successful at finding peace and
contentment no matter what the circumstance.
And I find that, to learn the secret of contentment, it does
help to read the Bible. And watch the sunset.
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