Called by name
THE
ASTROS
Marcelo Augusto de Carvalho
GENESIS 1.14-19
On the fourth day then, God created
the great stars: the Sun, the Moon and the Stars.
Let us study the formation of each of
them in the order in which the Bible presents them and learn the spiritual
lessons that each one teaches us.
THE SUN
The Sun is an average star that lies 150
million km from Earth. It has a diameter of 1,392,000 km, about 109 times that
of Earth, and its volume is 1.3 million times that of our planet.
All the light, heat and energy of this system comes
from it, as well as the energy used on Earth - such as electricity, coal,
gasoline, fire and wind.
It is indispensable for maintenance as
the order of the System, because it is its gravity that causes the planets to
move and remain in their orbits. Because it has 99% of the mass of the entire
Solar System, it has a lot of gravity, which attracts the planets: if this did
not occur, the stars would get lost in endless space and if they did not move
they would immediately fall into the Sun. It's so gravity that
But strange things happen in the Sun;
the Earth rotates once every 24 hours, and everything about it spins at that
same speed. But parts of the sun rotate at different speeds. For example; if
you lived in the Equator of the Sun, you would do a total rotation every 25 of
our days, but if you lived near the poles it would take 33 of our days to make
the same journey.
One question is important now: do we know that the Sun
heats all the stars of our system, even those that are very far away; how can
it emit so much energy?
In the hottest part of the Sun,
its core, where a temperature of l5 million degrees centigrade, occurs nuclear
reactions producing energy. It is formed of hydrogen atoms, but because their
gravity is too large, these atoms are pushed against each other to unite. This
union is very violent: they collide so hard that they turn into helium atoms,
releasing a lot of heat and energy. Thus sunlight is radiated to the farthest
points of the Universe.
The amazing thing is that the range of
solar rays through endless space is at least 2 billion km. But to produce
energy to heat and illuminate this entire expanse, the Sun decomposes at the
ratio of 4 million and 200,000 tons per second. Incredible! But the interesting
thing is that it is so immensely large that despite decomcomming so much, it
will take l50 billion years to consume 1% of its mass.
- To get an idea
of your energy released every moment, let's compare the sun to a very large
lamp. We generally don't buy lamps that are over 300 watts. But when we think
of the sun as a lamp, we need to stretch our imagination. The sun shines with
the energy of 380 watts. These 380 take 24 zeros, or 380 million million.
(380,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.).
But the most important lesson to be learned
is that if the sun didn't give its energy it would just get hotter and hotter,
and then explode. Giving light and heat is the way the Sun keeps shining and
producing more heat and light. He survives because he can.
The same is the same for us. Every day
we receive, by reading the Bible, by the experiences of life, on Saturdays in
sabbath school and in worship the Gospel of Jesus. He is wonderful for our
life; but one thing is certain: if we do not begin to share it with others, it
will destroy our lives. We'll be so full of it that it will clog our
perceptions and then we'll be sterile for life. This is what happened to the
Jews; they knew a lot about God, but they never shared him with anyone. When He
came, they were so clogged that they didn't recognize him and so they killed
him.
How much of Jesus have you been in debt to your
friends?
THE MOON
The Moon is earth's natural satellite. It's controlled by our planet and goes around it.
It has a diameter of 3,476 km, and is about
It is a silent star because it has no
air, life, water, plants or animals. The opposite side of the Sun is always
extremely dark and cold, due to having a much lower gravity than that of the
Earth, causing it two very interesting effects:
It is unable to maintain an atmosphere
around you, so it is subject to large temperature variations; during the day it
can reach more than L00 degrees Centigrade, falling at night up to minus 173
degrees.
A
The bigger the planet, the more moons it
has. The Earth has only one, but the larger planets have more. Mars and Neptune
have 2 each. Uranus has 5, Saturn 10 and Jupiter 13. The only exceptions
without moons are Mercury and Venus. Our moon is one of the largest with about
a quarter of the diameter of the Earth.
The Moon is also the most studied star
with the only one visited by man personally. Between 1960 and 1972, 17 Apollo
missions were developed to meet her and on July 20, 1969, man first stepped on
its surface. Twelve astronauts have been there, bringing about
But
despite being much smaller than earth, the Moon exerts a strong attraction on it.
An example of this is the tides; they go
up and down on the beach twice a day, following the attraction exerted by the
Sun and moon. Another example is birds that can use the light of the Moon to
orient themselves at night by the stars like some fish. There are cases of fish
waiting to feel the light of the Moon on certain days of the year to spawn
their eggs on the beaches.
This
is the lesson that the Moon leaves us: although small, it exerts its attraction
on the other stars, and although it has no light of its own is the only strong
source of light we have at night. The same path we must follow. Whether we are
big or small, we have our role to play in this world and for this we cannot
cower.
Let us be a force, even if small, for
the good of humanity. Remember Naaman's
little serva? Moses'
sister? Of the boy who gave his loaves and fishto Jesus to feed the multitude?
Paul's nephew who saved him from death? From little Jesus who taught the
scribes in the Temple? Let us be lights that point a better path in this world
of darkness and endless misfortune.
THE STARS
The stars were undoubtedly not created
on the fourth day. They already existed when God created the earth. Moses, in
writing the account of creation, didactically placed every object created on
its most appropriate day, and this was the case of the stars. We know this
because by capturing the light of the stars, scientists conclude that they
lasted hundreds of years, even thousands and millions of years to reach us.
Therefore, they already existed when they left, as well as the account of the
creation we find in Genesis is not of the formation of the Universe but of our
planet.
A star is a celestial
body formed by a huge incandescent gaseous globe. In fact, it's other suns
similar to ours.
Its dimensions are classified into:
dwarf stars - 10 times the size of our
Sun, medium-sized approximate to our Sun, giants - 10 to 100 times larger than
our Sun, the supergiants - hundreds to thousands of times larger than our Sun.
To get an idea of the size of these
giant stars, let's take beteugeuse's example.
It is 600 light years from Earth and is 400 million miles in diameter. A man
who on Earth is six feet tall, relative to the size of his planet, if he were
Beteugeuse, would have the
following size for this planet:
The only star seen during Earth's day is
the Sun, but at night it is possible to observe 6,000 of them with the naked
eye. There are, however, trillions of them in the Universe, most of them
situated at such great distances that it is impossible to understand them. The
closest star to Earth is the Sun, about 15 million km, but the others are so
far away that we use the light-years measure to measure these distances. A
light year is the route that light travels in a year, that is, 9.44 trillion
km. So if we were to go
to the star closest to us without counting the Sun, this would be the next centaur, it would take
4.3 light years. That is, we would cover 40,592 trillion km, walking at a
But despite centuries of study, very
little we know about the stars. But one thing is certain: they are very
beautiful and exist by the thousands. At God's order to Abraham to count the stars, we
agreed with him that it would be impossible to do so. Astronomers have used
mathematical formulas to make this calculation and estimate that stars must
reach at least 1 octillion of stars (the forty-eighth power of ten).
It would be number 1 accompanied by 27 zeros
(1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).
James Snelling, a naturalist from Battle
Creek, Michigan, estimates that if the sky started
raining green peas and lakes, rivers and oceans froze in luck that the peas
would cumble, it would take 250,000 Earth-sized planets, all covered in green
peas more than 1 meter
A tremendous lesson we learn here: the psalmist states that God knows the
name of each star, calls them for them in the Universe, Psalm 147.4. This shows
us how thorough God is to care in dealing with his creatures. The same does to
us; he knows us by name, knows all our particularities, desires, longings,
frustrations as pleasures, and wants to help us in everything. How does He do
it if there are millions of creatures throughout the universe? I don't know,
but he does.
When he was on earth, Jesus made an
intriguing statement: Matthew 10:30. How many strands of hair do you have? Have you told him? I
bet you don't know, but a madman ended up telling you this: there's about 100, 000 hairs on a head in normal conditions.
Besides, there's about
30, 000 strands of beard in a man. It is estimated that daily we lose about 75 hairs.
That's why it's hard to know how many threads we have today, but God knows it.
And you know a lot of other things that are far more important in our lives
than hair.
Appeal: Now it is enough for us to trust His care
and rest in His love. That way we'll be happy all our lives. Believe in the
love of Jesus!
SOURCE
Adventures of Creation. Dr. Haroldo G, Coffin. Casa Publicadora
Brasileira, Tatuí-SP, Brazil. 1993 edition.
Youth Inspiration. Casa Publicadora
Brasileira, Tatuí-SP, Brazil. Editions from 1977 to 2005.
Pr. Marcelo Augusto De Carvalho -
April 1997 São Paulo SP Brazil