Saturday, September 12, 2020
or Dying Star
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
For The Traveller You Light The Way
Until In The End We Can Only Hope
That From This Star We Would Be Ever So Far.
Psalm 24:1
The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it.
Ephesians 5:15
Be careful then how you live, not as unwise people but as wise.
Words of Grace For Today
Psalm 111:10 (and twice in Proverbs, once in Ecclesiasticus) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Be careful, live as wise people.
Wisdom requires fear.
Why fear God?
God made the world, the universe, and all that is in it, and all that live in it.
Fear is the appropriate attitude to take to the one who creates such a marvellous and ferocious and beautiful and destructive universe.
Watch a star through its life,ending in a supernova explosion*! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made?
Watch one’s child be born! How can one respond other than in fear of what God has made and given one responsibility for?
Fear is a great motivator. It’s kept us alive as a species as long as we’ve existed. It’s given despots power since before history was written. It’s kept marriages together and blown them apart. It’s kept vulnerable persons alive and sane, and driven the strongest people insane.
By itself it helps move us to survive, but it does not move us to live fully.
Martin Luther begins each explanation in his Small Catechism with “We are to fear and love God so that ….”
Knowingly participating in God’s Kingdom requires fear and love of God.
Love of God, as our response to God’s unconditional love of us, when combined with fear of God, keeps us mindful of our place in the universe and before God, and mindful of the wonders and blessings God provides for us each day, undeserving though we all are!
Together, fear and love, bring us to seek goodness for everyone, to right injustices, and to sacrifice that others may know the good blessings God provides for all people to share.
That is the beginning of wisdom, the kind of wisdom that the Creator of all intended us to live with each day, even as we live with challenges insurmountable, like Covid-19, and the really dangerous rampant denial that Covid 19 is here and does seemingly randomly kill.
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* for those unfamiliar with what a supernova is: science.howstuffworks.com/star6.htm
Stars More Massive Than the Sun
When the core runs out of hydrogen, these stars fuse helium into carbon just like the sun. However, after the helium is gone, their mass is enough to fuse carbon into heavier elements such as oxygen, neon, silicon, magnesium, sulfur and iron. Once the core has turned to iron, it can burn no longer. The star collapses by its own gravity and the iron core heats up. The core becomes so tightly packed that protons and electrons merge to form neutrons. In less than a second, the iron core, which is about the size of Earth, shrinks to a neutron core with a radius of about 6 miles (10 kilometers). The outer layers of the star fall inward on the neutron core, thereby crushing it further. The core heats to billions of degrees and explodes (supernova), thereby releasing large amounts of energy and material into space. The shock wave from the supernova can initiate star formation in other interstellar clouds. The remains of the core can form a neutron star or a black hole depending upon the mass of the original star.