To What Might We Cling?
It was my father who spoke to me that our sun is a yellow dwarf star. I am not sure how it is classified these days. I just remember being astounded that our sun was a star at all. Stars are those tiny night time things in the sky that had very faint light and no heat. Our experience of the sun is so different than that. Now I get it. We have ours, and the red or blue giants or dwarfs, the neutron stars, the white brown or red dwarfs all have systems of their own. I am just glad we have ours.
Some astronomers say the birth of our sun from its molecular cloud beginnings was four and a half billion years ago. Depending on where we click, we find estimates it has at least that amount of life left in it. I guess even big old solar systems pass away. It is not passing on as fast as the world, and not as fleeting-breath fast as our own lives. I will come back to this thought because it touches on the wisdom of this Sunday’s Epistle. First, let’s pause for a bit of solar frivolity.
FUN WITH THE SUN: A SONNET
Oh, Helios, what a hot mess you are.
Your corona so exceedingly bright
We benefit from all your warmth and your light
We are glad to have our very own star
I’ve no notion of why it takes a year
to make our full trek orbiting round you
Could we punch it and in six months be through?
Then, twice per year blow out candles and cheer?
But seriously, thank God for your core:
hydrogen loaded, and fusing so well
four billion years spent, half done, so they tell
We’re glad you have such fuel volume in store
We’re lost without you, and would never have been.
No hot mess! In truth, you deserve a ten.
There is no harm in being light once in a while. They tell me angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. No, we turn to the serious wisdom of St. Paul in his First Epistle to the Corinthians. He seems to be asking them to keep focused on the highest things and their relationship to Jesus Christ, first and foremost because life is so short. There are eternal things life, love itself and there are things that will diminish and fade.
We are focusing on the things that will last. Here are a couple of verses from the passage: “I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short… For the present form of this world is passing away.” —1 Corinthians 7:29, 31. Does that sound at all like his words here: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. —Colossians 3:2-3. Think as well of the words from the First Epistle of John:
Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever. —1 John 2:15-17
We are thinking this week about being called by Christ to follow him. He called the fishermen on the shores of the Galilee lake, and he is calling us here in the midst of our own lives. We are to strive to understand that leaving what we see as our whole world, is worth it, because of the world that God offers us. This world is passing away; the world of the eternal God will never pass away: not in ten years and not in four and a half billion years. Our fears in this life are real, so we cling to things. We cling to fleeting things. Jesus will direct us to eternal things, things that provide real security and real life.