Signs, Seasons, Days, Years, Light . . .

Genesis 1:14-15   And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so. (ESV)

One of the purposes of God creating the Sun and Moon and stars was for signs and season, days and years, and light upon the earth. In the last few centuries we've lost a lot of the "working" understanding of the heavens as a way to mark the passing of time (days, months, years) as it has been replaced with wall calendars, electronic calendars, clocks and watches. It strikes me that the less we pay attention to the heavens, the less we often connect with God as well, because another purpose of the heavens, according to God's Word, is to display His glory. I know that for me, spending time gazing upward and reflecting, puts things on earth back into perspective and returns me to a place of worship and awe.

We started homeschool with our girls this week and one of the things I am doing is teaching them Classical Astronomy from a wonderful book called Signs & Seasons by Jay Ryan which we got at a homeschool conference. (You can find the book and sign up for free Classical Astronomy newsletters at www.classicalastronomy.com.) Classical Astronomy is the study of the heavens (which includes the Sun, our most visible star!) without telescopes, but with the naked eye as they have been done since Creation. It is like learning to read a book written across the sky by God, and it is fascinating how easily you can determine directions, times, and seasons through what He has placed there. I have found in the study that what I used to look at and not even notice (does that make sense?) I am now noticing in far different ways (the length of shadows, etc.).

Pounding nails to mark the shadow every 10 minutes.

Our first "field" project has been building a compass in our backyard using the Sun. The principle is that when the sun is highest (high noon, not necessarily your watch's noon) shadows point North and the Sun is South. You can tell when it is at its highest when the shadows are shortest in the day. (Incidentally, that North/South line is called the meridian, or "middle of the day" and when the sun is before it it is "ante meridian," or "am," and when it is past it then it is "post meridian," or "pm." Cool, isn't it!)

Around 2:40 pm. We are ready to find the shortest!

So, we put a stake in the ground and the girls went out about every 10 minutes from around 11:30 am onward and drove a nail at the center, end of the shadow of the stake. Later we found which was the shortest shadow and drew a line through the stake to that nail and past it and we had our line North. We drove a spike in the ground about 80" out from the stake on that line and then carried the line back 80" to the other side of the stake and drove a spike, marking South. Then, using intersecting arcs drawn from each North/South stake we could find a point 90-degrees off the center in the East and West directions and we marked a line from the center spike 80" in each of those directions and put a spike. Now we have a compass 160" in diameter in our back yard! It points straight at the North Star!

Each of us standing at the cardinal points of our compass—
Bethany, North; Abigail, South; Mary Ann, East; myself,
West. We also have a spike in the center for future reference.

We are looking forward to moving further in the book and being drawn closer to our Creator as we marvel at the order and design He has woven into His Creation, and we worship Him as a family. Thanks, Jay and your family, for sharing your knowledge with us!

The Heaven's Declare — Part 3

Continuing the series, and moving farther out from a few stunning facts about our earth and sun, the next part I shared about in my teaching (and the handout I later made that I am taking these from) is about our Solar System. Next post, our Milky Way galaxy. After that, our universe. 
   As with all these posts, I can't verify the facts, but I've tried to get them from web sites that seem to know what they are talking about (whatever that exactly means). Enjoy. Reflect. And be in awe. We have a mighty and awesome God, and the Heavens declare His glory. Don't forget the "God Thought" at the end of each post . . . He, and your faith and relationship with Him, is truly what this is all about, not just getting puffed up with some more knowledge. May He pour out revelation and a deep awareness of His love for you and His presence as you read this.   —Erick

Our Solar System
How big is the network of our sun and the planets orbiting it? Let’s use an example someone made up of a walk. Imagine each 3' step you take to represent 1,000,000 miles (yes, one million miles). Picture a football field and start at the back of one of the end zones and pretend you are where the sun is. Now walk forward, cross the end zone, past the 50 yard line, and continue in to your opponent’s side of the field. When you get to their 17 yard line you have reached the earth (remember, each step was 1 million miles!). Now, continue walking over 1.5 miles and you will get to Neptune, the farthest out planet if you don’t want to count poor Pluto (if you do you’ll need to walk over 2 miles from the back of the end zone where you started). The same site said that if you got on a jet and flew at 600 miles per hour from the Sun to Neptune, it would take 513 years. If you could drive the same distance, it would take 4,400 years.

Defining a Few Terms
Since we are starting from here out to get into some terms that represent some big numbers, here's a few simplified definitions and way of looking at things to help us try and grasp them.


Light Year: How far you would travel in one year if you traveled constantly at the speed of light, which is about 186,000 miles per second (or, around the world at the equator over seven times in a second).

Billion: If you typed the letter “a” on a sheet of paper 1,000 times, you’d need 1 million sheets to have a billion letter “a”s. Or, if you started counting now, it would take you 32 years to count a billion seconds.

Astronomical: We use this term to describe things really, really BIG! No wonder. It comes from the root “astro” pertaining to stars and celestial bodies.

God Thought: Ephesians 1:4 says that “. . . He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world”—before He created one bit of this He already knew you, loved you, and had a plan to restore you to Him through Jesus’ death. You are truly precious! In fact, His entire creation of the universe was the opening act to His culmination . . . creating us!

The Heaven's Declare — Part 2

Here's the part of my handout dealing with our "local" space—Earth and our sun. In Part 3 we'll look at our solar system, and in posts after that our galaxy and then the universe. At the end of each will be a "God Thought". I encourage you to read and meditate on them. After all, knowledge for the sake of knowledge simply puffs us up and makes us arrogant—we then become people who spout all the right words and arguments, but have nothing of the love, humility, and gentle service of Christ. And, without love, we have nothing. The point of this knowledge is to glorify God, strengthen our faith, and equip us for the work of ministry. May God bless you as your read these. (Note: Please remember the statement in Part 1 that, though I state these things as fact, I obviously can't personally verify them through observation or my own measurement, and I can't even tell you where on the internet I got them all. Not to mention that the numbers probably change with every new discovery or better telescope. I can say I tried hard to use facts I found in multiple places, and to not exaggerate anything to make a point.)

Earth—one of eight (or nine?) planets orbiting our sun, making up our solar system. Mostly covered in water, it is almost 25,000 miles around at the equator. It rotates on its axis fully once per day, which means we are spinning at over 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. At the same time we are spinning at over 1,000 miles per hour, we are orbiting the sun (which is 93 million miles away from us) at almost 67,000 miles per hour, all on this shell of rock and land and water that contains inside it a core with temperatures estimated between 7,000–12,000°F (to compare, water boils at 212°F, and human skin is supposedly not comfortable above 140°F). And yet, we can balance on a balance beam, sip coffee without spilling, play catch, experience sun and snow, and sleep peacefully.

Our Sun—our nearest star, has a diameter 109 times bigger than the earth’s. We could fit 1.3 million earths inside our sun. The sun makes up 99.8% of the mass in our solar system, with Jupiter and Saturn taking up most of the other .2% (the earth really doesn’t even register on the scale). The center of the Sun is approximately 27,000,030°F, and the surface of the Sun is about 9,932°F.
    And yet, our sun is rather tiny in comparison to other stars out there. For example, Canis Majoris, the largest known star in volume (not mass) has a radius that is estimated to be 1,800–2,100 times larger than our sun’s radius, and to be around 500,000 times brighter than our sun. One site said that if you were to make a model, with our earth a sphere of a diameter of .39 inches (less than half an inch), then, to represent Canis Majoris you’d need a sphere with a diameter of 1.43 miles! And, R136A1, the largest know star by mass (not volume), is estimated to have surface temperatures exceeding 72,000°F—seven times hotter than our sun’s surface temperature!

God Thought: Psalm 33:6 says, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” If these stars were brought forth by the word of the Lord and the breath of His mouth, what is going on in your life that is too big for you to trust Him with it?

The Ordinary is Extraordinary!

Mary Ann working on her cast.

Last Sunday our family left for our "weekend" and slipped up to the Sierra Nevada Mountains after church for some fellowship and fishing. We love what happens in our hearts above 5,000 feet when the rivers are flowing with clear, cold water and the breeze blows through the tall trees that cover the rock covered mountains. Bethany caught a trout while we were there, Abigail became an amazing "caster," and Mary Ann and I got to practice fly fishing. There is something so beautiful about that line curling up in the air above and behind a person as they gently drop the fly into the stream or pool. The new header for this blog is a picture of our family from our trip (if you are reading this by email subscription you'll need to go to the blog to see it). It was wonderful, refreshing, and beautiful—and the fact that we shared the couple of days with some wonderful people up there who love the Lord and our family made it especially sweet.

On the way home Tuesday night we headed straight west for awhile, right into a sunset. The sun was slipping down behind the far hills and there must have been a haze or something out there because it was a big, orange ball that you could actually look at. I have seen hundreds of sunsets in my life, and there was nothing in and of itself spectacular about this one, but for some reason it really struck Mary Ann and I at the same time. Maybe it is because this last year or two God has been awakening me to the awe and wonder of His Creation in the heavens and I have been learning a lot, and sharing a lot, about them. Normally, during the day, you can't look at the sun. It is this ball of light in the corner of our eye that we take for granted. It is normal. But Tuesday night we couldn't not stare at it as it was straight in front of us right on the horizon. To take our eyes off it would be to take them off the road. As we stared at it we both were like, "That is a star!"

I don't know that this will make much sense, but there is a sense, at least for me, that I see all these stars out there at night, and then during the day there is our sun. Maybe it is because I equate stars with night, but it often eludes my conscious thought that the sun is a star. I know it intellectually, but fail to focus on that fact. It is just "the sun" in the sky, and it is "normal." Tuesday night, however, we both found ourselves in awe, realizing we were staring at a star—a great big, massive, ball of gas and fire that would consume us long before we ever got to it! We were staring at a star and it was big and it was close! It was astounding. It was awe inspiring. There is this star just a skip away in light year terms that we are circling around. We are feeling its heat. Its blazing light is lighting up our earth. It is so big and so powerful that nothing man has ever created is a fraction of its power. According to one web site, if we could harness it right, enough energy arrives at our earth every minute to meet all of our demands for a year—and that is with only about a hundredth of a millionth of a percent of the sun's energy actually hitting our earth! It is so mighty, and yet we (at least I) take it for granted and take our proximity to it for granted. I am afraid that in this, and in many things, I have let the extraordinary become ordinary.