When you embrace God, you embrace a consuming fire. Go ahead, take him to your heart, but know what it means. Know what of necessity must be consumed. There are things we hate, but cannot release. In time, they will burn. There are things we love or somehow feel we cannot part with, yet hinder us. They are worthless and, in time, will burn away. There are things that are good, but not yet pure. They will be refined. Our God is a consuming fire, but the things we need, the things that make us better, the things we truly desire will only increase in value as they pass through the flames.
© 2005
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
Astounding Beginnings
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1).
Glancing through a magazine one afternoon, I ran across this imaginative piece of trivia:
If the solar system were shrunk to the size of New York's Manhattan Island, the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be 5,500 miles away, in Jerusalem.
We know, for instance, that traveling at the speed of light, we could reach the sun in about eight minutes. Traveling on at lightspeed, it would take more than four years to reach the next nearest star. At our current rate of space travel, however, it would take 100,000 years.
If we were to shrink the sun to the size of a pin head, the solar system would fill a large living room.
Let's say the living room is in a beach house of the coast of Southern California. Alpha Centauri, that next nearest star, would be on Catalina Island, 26 miles away. Shrunk to this scale, our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, with its 200 billion stars, would be 600,000 miles in diameter. It's not, of course, it's a trillion times larger than that.
Which accounts for one galaxy. But there are more than 10 billion in the observable universe.
"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."
© 2005
Glancing through a magazine one afternoon, I ran across this imaginative piece of trivia:
If the solar system were shrunk to the size of New York's Manhattan Island, the next nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be 5,500 miles away, in Jerusalem.
We know, for instance, that traveling at the speed of light, we could reach the sun in about eight minutes. Traveling on at lightspeed, it would take more than four years to reach the next nearest star. At our current rate of space travel, however, it would take 100,000 years.
If we were to shrink the sun to the size of a pin head, the solar system would fill a large living room.
Let's say the living room is in a beach house of the coast of Southern California. Alpha Centauri, that next nearest star, would be on Catalina Island, 26 miles away. Shrunk to this scale, our entire galaxy, the Milky Way, with its 200 billion stars, would be 600,000 miles in diameter. It's not, of course, it's a trillion times larger than that.
Which accounts for one galaxy. But there are more than 10 billion in the observable universe.
"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth."
© 2005
Monday, March 07, 2005
Burning Gift
A ball of fire suspended in space, millions of miles away, warms me. Today, arctic air touches my face, but still I feel the heat of that fire -- my round, white sun. It's brilliance fills my world. I see by its glow. Its rays force life into the planet, my home. Long, swift fingers of light caress, prod, knead -- pushing, pulling.
Life does trail from those radiant fingertips.
Life and light and warmth.
My star.
My sun.
My fire.
© 2005
Life does trail from those radiant fingertips.
Life and light and warmth.
My star.
My sun.
My fire.
© 2005
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