For the longest time, people believed the earth was the center of the universe. The sun seemed to arrive every day, bursting into life, giving warmth and light, and leave at evening time, plunging us into darkness. The world was ours, and we stood at the center with the sun and the stars revolving around us. It’s not that the sun wasn’t important; it was. So important, in fact, that some people worshiped it as a capricious god. In the winter, as it faded and thinned for half the year they prayed and sacrificed until it was persuaded to return.
But some people doubted that the world was set up in that way. 300 years before Christ, the Greek philosopher Aristarchus proposed a radical new model he called heliocentric, with the sun at the center of the world, and we at the edge, turning our planet around it. 1800 years later, Copernicus did some calculations and then Galileo built a telescope and they found he was right. The sun doesn’t rise; we turn to it, and let it flood or world with light. The sun doesn’t leave us at night; it’s we who turn slowly away from it. The sun doesn’t fade in Winter; it’s we who spend a season leaning away from it. The sun doesn’t hide itself behind clouds; clouds drift in to block our connection, but the sun is always there, constant at the center with the galaxy spinning around it.
When I became a Christian, it was as if God had appeared in my life like the sun, beaming in, lighting everything up. It was wonderful, and confusing, because there would be times when he seemed to disappear, when I couldn’t feel His love. It took me a while to realize He had not appeared in my world; rather I had found myself in His. When it gets dark and cold, it’s not that He has left me; it’s I that have turned away, busy with something else. When I can’t feel his warmth and love as I want to, it’s because something has made me lean away from Him, perhaps for a season, or something has come between us. He is always there, constant at the center, pouring out his light and warmth. I just need to turn to Him. Better still, I only need to ask Him to help me turn to Him. He’s not angry when I wander. He loves me too much for that. He loves you too much. He knows that’s how we work, and have you seen how beautiful earth looks from space? How we look to him? He’s always there, with His love and His light, gentle and ready to help us back to Him.
It’s not my world. It’s not yours. It’s better than that – it’s His, and you and I find our place in it.
No better place to be.
Ephesians 1:4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
Isaiah 60:19-20 The sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you, for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory. Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more; the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of sorrow will end.
Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands
Grace Parables 