St. Michael and All Angels

When you were a child or young person, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did you follow that profession or job, or did you become something entirely different?

When I was about 6, I became very interested in astronomy and read all I could get my hands on that was accessible to a young child, and I wanted to be an astronomer. I knew how far the Earth was from the Sun, the order of the planets, I knew about asteroids, how many miles there were in a light year, and I was desperate to live to see man journey into space and hoped that I could go too one day. Then, when I was about 9, an adult – I don’t remember who – killed that ambition stone dead on the spot by telling me that I had to be good at Maths: and my worst subject at school, that often reduced me to tears of frustration and misery and complete un-comprehension was – Maths.

Although I eventually studied languages and became a languages teacher and fulfilled another ambition (to travel), I never lost my fascination with the natural world: the cosmos above us and the earth around us. Presenters such as David Attenborough over nearly 70 years, and Professor Brian Cox more recently, have opened our eyes to the extraordinary world we live in, aided and abetted by amazing cameramen and women.

All around us we see the glory of Creation. It adheres to the laws of physics; it is, mostly, predictable: it doesn’t fly apart into its constituent atoms; it’s held in being, life on Earth is ordered – and quirky (duck-billed platypus, anyone?): although there’s much we still don’t understand.

We live on a “Goldilocks” planet: nearer the Sun and it would be too hot, toxic, or both, like Mercury or Venus (but they do look pretty in the night sky!); further away and the planet would be too cold with little atmosphere, like Mars. We’re at just the right distance; our planet is green and blue with air and land and sea to support life. And I discovered last October, from a programme I watched on a flight, that the Earth’s magnetic field not only gives us the Aurora Borealis but also protects us from cosmic radiation and harmful charged particles from the Sun. In turn, 100 times the distance of the Earth from the Sun (that’s 92 plus 9 noughts miles away) there’s a bubble called the heliosphere, created by the Sun, which protects the Solar System from harmful cosmic radiation from the galaxy we’re part of.

I’m amazed, and delighted, and humbled by the complexity and beauty of the world and the night sky. Even if we could explain everything about how the world came into being and how it all works, we couldn’t explain why it is. We’re finite, and the universe ends somewhere (where, I wonder? And what’s beyond that?). An Indian Christian theologian has said, “God has to bigger than His creation.” We can’t explain or define the infinite, all we can do is bow before Him in worship and gratitude that He loves us deeply, entered our world, died on Good Friday and rose again on Easter Sunday to give us hope for this life and eternal life in the next if we turn to Him and let Him enter our lives.

St. Michael and All Angels

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