Keep Looking Up…

 

So, I have to admit that I am a bit of a nerd about many things, I can’t help it, it is just who I am. As such, I found the coverage yesterday of the meteor explosion over Russia fascinating. I have spent many hours over the years with my eye glued to the eye piece of my telescope, gazing at the wonder of God’s creation and pondering the vastness of our universe.

One of the questions that I had about the meteor blast was its relationship, if any, to the large asteroid that passed within 18,000 miles of earth yesterday (an eyelash in the cosmic terms) I went to one of my favorite Astronomy web sites, Sky and Telescope, to see if I could get an answer to that question and as usual, these folks were right there with the information. (And in case you were wondering, no they weren’t related at all because they were coming from opposite directions)

Here is a link to the article:  Sky and Telescope

After reading the article, I began reading a few of the comments (which I love to do) and the first comment criticized the author of the article for this line: “Fortunately, we have heard no reports of fatalities, but several dozen people were hurt badly enough to require hospitalization. Obviously, our thoughts and prayers go out to these people, and we wish them a speedy recovery.”

The commenter had this to say: “I would like to offer a bit of constructive criticism; please refrain from using the bromide “thoughts and prayers” in a scientific magazine such as this.”

To be honest, I really didn’t even notice where in the article the author had made that comment, I actually had to go back through and find what the poster might have considered offensive. I realize that as someone who loves both science and religion, I look at the world a little differently than others may. I have never once seen a conflict between science and faith. I am a firm believer in the law of physics, because I believe it was God who invented those laws.

I remember going with a group of friends once to the Wright Patterson Air Force Museum over in Dayton, Ohio, and while there we all went to see an IMAX movie that took us from a simple drop of water, deeper and deeper into the structure of water until we reached the subatomic level, then we began to go out from the drop of water to discover that the drop was a in a small pond and that the small pond was in a large city and we gradually pulled back farther and farther until we had a panoramic view of the universe where our galaxy, the Milky Way, was no longer even distinguishable from the other billions of galaxies.

One of the memorable observations in the movie was that the  very element which makes our blood the color red was formed in the heart of a distant star which means that, in reality, we are made of star-dust…  That sounds like a pretty Biblical concept to me!

And in the end, the narrator made the observation that prior to the “Big Bang,” the mass of the entire universe was so condensed that it could fit into the “palm of the hand…”

My Good friend, Jim Hurt, leaned up to me and without missing a beat said, “And guess whose hand it was in.”  🙂

I remember regularly watching a 5 minute weekly program on PBS called “Star Gazer” where the host always concluded the program with the phrase, “Keep looking up.” I think that as we continue our journey through Lent… that would be good advice for us as well!

Keep looking up my friends!

Blessings