This week I have rather bizarely had several conversation about the Sun. It’s mainly because the weather has been getting better recently and we are pretty close to the first proper day of spring after one of the harshest winters in 30 years. It’s great because the sun is out more often now, the time of daylight is getting longer and the first signs of new life in our window box are starting.
Having sunny days and lighter mornings and evenings just seems to make everything much better. Someone I was talking to the other day said it’s great because they would be free of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) and the onset of depression brought about by a lack of sun. Connetced to this, I caught the end of an episode of a great new TV series on BBC called Wonders of the Solar System. The first epidsode was called the Empire of the Sun and was all about the amazing powers of the Sun and it’s wider-reaching power in our solar system and beyond, from solar flares to northern lights.
This all got me thinking… It’s amazing how important the sun is to the world: it gives light, helps stuff grow, forms spectacular light shows for the human race and even detirmines the mood we’re in! In fact the Sun is so massively important and colossal that it sustains the whole of our solar system and a bit beyond…crazy!
That all mounts up to make me extremely excited about this picture of our real home…
And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. Revelation 21:23
God made the sun in Genesis 1 and gave it all the power and influence it has. Hang on for a second…remember how important the sun is to life in our world, the solar system and beyond…and yet God made it. How much more powerful is God as creator than the created thing then?! In fact he made all the suns in the universe, which we can see as stars in the night sky. God is so amazingly powerful it blows my mind.
Even more amazing is this…Jesus is decribed as the Lamb who was slain by John in the book of Revelation. So in the above passage John is actually comparing the seemingly all-powerful, life-giving light of the sun to Jesus. He is the True Sun, the Ultimate Lamp and Illuminator of Heaven. Jesus is even greater than the sun because as the Greatest Light Jesus is enables so much more than just life to exist, but rather He gives eternal life.
If the sun blows my mind with it’s life sustaining power, how much more should the true Light of the World, Jesus?!
