October 6, 2016 (Thursday)
“I’ve never seen anything like that before!” is a statement heard occasionally whenever a very unusual event takes place. That was my own personal response when I saw the photograph, taken from the Space Station, of the Aurora Borealis. I’ve never seen the Aurora Borealis at all, but I had seen pictures of that beautiful sight for many years. Then the astronauts took a picture from space and sent back to earth a sight no one had ever seen: an entire circle of magnetic clouds around the Arctic Circle. Here’s a copy of the photo:
“The bright dancing lights of the aurora are actually collisions between electrically charged particles from the sun that enter the earth’s atmosphere.” The colors may be green, purple or red, depending upon which molecules in our atmosphere are put into motion. It is a magnificent sight, whether viewed from earth or space.
We live in an amazing world. To begin with, we know things about our world that were not known by humans for thousands of years. We now know the earth is a ball, circling the sun, which is a fireball. Other planets also circle the sun. We call this our solar system, which itself is circling the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. All this takes place at incredible speeds. Beyond our galaxy, there is a universe filled with billions of galaxies. The thoughts of all this are overwhelming.
Coming back to earth, this is a wonderful, wonderful place, with a tremendous variety of life in so many forms that we have not yet discovered them all. Ours is a planet covered with life, colorful and exciting. God has allowed mankind, his crowning creation, to study and understand how the world works. Every day we are living in a world of wonder.
What a wonderful world. “Then sings my soul, my Savior, God, to Thee, How Great Thou Art!”