Think about what the Sun does to nature and to us humans.It rises in the morning and signals our day – the time to awake and come out of the cold and dark night. We greet the light and shed the stupor from our muscles and brains; we arise renewed and clear-minded to face life for another day.
That is normally what we do upon waking – or unconsciously do so every time. But what does the Sun actually do to our lives? How far-reaching or compelling is its influence upon us?
Even at night, the Sun reaches us. The Moon reflects the Sun’s light to give us enough light to walk about or just simply sit or lie down in wonder. Is the Moon glorious? Not when it’s hiding in the darkness. It owes its changing appearance of splendor from the Sun King. Otherwise, it’s an arid, desolate and unfriendly place a few humans visit only for its plain, lifeless rocks.
And what if the Moon cannot be seen? Is the Sun totally out of reach? Never. There is Venus soaring visibly and brilliantly from the horizon with reddish Mars, both Sun-reflectors, like all the other tiny twinkling planets. If we only look hard enough, we never lose sight of the Sun’s presence. A ray – even a single tiny shaft -- of light somehow touches our being (we don’t even have to look at Venus or Mars) reminding us silently of the ever-present energy behind the whole massive globe of the Earth.
But what if the clouds obscure all the planets and the stars and we dwell in the total darkness of midnight? How could the Sun still affect us?
A simple illustration would be the waters of the sea and the moisture in the atmosphere which absorb enough of the Sun’s heat during the day and retain it longer than most gases and other solid matter, thus, sustaining life. This process also prevents the extremely low temperatures that exist on Mercury’s constantly dark face.
Furthermore, as it revolves, Earth remains attached to the Sun in its orbit due to gravitational attraction. Yet the Sun plays us like an expert dancer bringing us close or far from the warmth of her heart and providing us with varying lengths of days and, together with the Earth’s tilt, the changing seasons -- a continuing reminder of the Sun’s magnificent influence.
What about the fish that dwell in the abyss? They definitely need no light for they have their own. They seem to need no plants to feed on for they have food down there to satisfy them in the blackest portions of the ocean. Their food? Detritus or decomposed debris of living beings that fall down to the abyss or they eat one another.
The Sun synthesizes proteins in plants with its light and provides food for every living being. What we actually eat is light metamorphosed into complex carbons – electromagnetic energy turned into bio-chemical substances. We are, in our entirety, products of the Sun -- no, children of the Sun. Every single cell carries the energy that once crossed the space between the Earth and the Sun and captured by a complex system of nature whose main purpose is to give and preserve life and, in the process, also to satisfy our various senses.
Nothing escapes the heat of the Sun. Nothing escapes the energy that the Sun generates.
In the presence of the colossal Sun, our planet is but a little more than a speck obeying the commands of the real star of the show, putty in the hands of a magnanimous master. The precision with which changes in our planet conform accordingly to the Sun’s movement (relative to the Earth) is beyond the scope of our scientific knowledge and technology. We are only beginning to comprehend how we benefit from or hang our very own existence on the mere presence of the Sun.
Many years before the Age of Modern Science, a prophet once wrote down this singular statement: Nothing escapes the heat of the Sun. How much we know now that proves beyond doubt the factuality and truthfulness of the statement is presumably enough to prove the presence of a wise Creator Who thought it all out even before He inspired that prophet to write those words.
Who has more knowledge or wisdom, he who sees with the eyes of faith and writes down a fact that he knows did not come from him but revealed to him, or he who seeks much knowledge without faith and concludes that everything works by chance (or by science, which is sometimes synonymous to some) and that ultimately what nature does is a product of “intelligent chance”? Fat chance!
In the end, the main issue in human education is not the amount or the sophistication of what we know but the validity of what we believe as Truth. Yes, science leads us closer to the truth of nature but it can sometimes lead us away from the source of true knowledge.
Psalm 19, from which the statement comes from, begins this way: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech. And night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their line (or sound) has gone out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the world.”
What we might discover without faith may blind us from seeing God’s glory in creation – for we are all blind to God at the start until He shows Himself to us. As such, we come to erroneous conclusions about life and nature. Still the goodness of God encompasses all. For like the Sun whose influence reaches all things, God – Who is definitely greater than the Sun, no, all the stars and galaxies for He created them all – also has everyone in His oversight, power and rule. That is why we worship Him and exclaim, “Yours, O God, is the kingdom, majesty, wisdom, honor and power.”
True faith and perfect knowledge lead us to complete satisfaction and eternal life. Unbelief and limited knowledge, on the other hand, only give momentary pleasure and do not assure us life for they hold no promise of life -- just, well, the possibility of existence. That’s like thinking the Sun will “not shine” tomorrow.
With such overwhelming evidence bearing down on us, whether we are awake or not, how could we still miss the Truth? The real paradox of “God-less science” is that it seeks to discover the limits of the Universe but is totally blind to the infinite proofs of clear and present realities.
(Photo above: Sunset over South China Sea in Luna, La Union.)
No comments:
Post a Comment