Daylight Savings

If you are keeping track of what time it is here, you may have noticed that the time difference between where you are and where we are is now different. This is just a reminder that Kenya doesn't observe Daylight Savings time. That means that if you are on Central time, we are now 8 hours apart instead of 9.

Kenyans don't even understand the concept. There is simply no need to save daylight here. All year long the sun rises at about 6:30 every morning and sets at about 6:30 every night. Sunrise is as early as 6:20 in the summer and as late as 6:40 in the winter.

We're only about 7/10 of a degree south of the equator here. When I look up at the huge expanse of sky at night, not only are the stars brighter here, but you can see a greater number here than you can in the States. Because of our relation to the equator, you can also see stars that are common in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. Here the Big Dipper lies close to the horizon in the North, and it's bucket points to the North Star, which lies just below the horizon (since we're below the equator). The Southern Cross also lies just above the horizon on the opposite end of the sky. I would walk right toward it every morning as I walked up the hill to the hospital. You can see Orion brightly overhead, although he is leaning more to the side, instead of standing upright and being closer to the horizon, the way the Greeks pictured him years ago.

The Milky Way shines brightly here, and is a testimony to the awesome expanse of this galaxy and this universe that God created. For some, the bigger they realize the universe is, the smaller God seems, and some refuse to believe altogether. But for me, knowing how incredibly huge this physical world is, makes the God that spoke it all into being with one word all that much more awesome and mighty.

The Bible says that "since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen." (Romans 1:20) In Colossians 1:16, Paul writes that "by him (Jesus) all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." Jesus was there in the beginning, with God, speaking everything into existence.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. John 1:1-3

When I read that and think of Jesus holding "all things together", I think about Physics. The strong and weak nuclear forces, these unseen and unexplainable forces that hold together everything from atoms to galaxies. You see, it really doesn't make any sense that in an atom you would have a bunch of positively charge particles stuck together in the middle of a nucleus. Like repels like, so the nucleus should explode! But for some reason it doesn't. Also, when you put a positively charged proton and a negatively charged electron next to each other, they are attracted to each other and the electron should just fly into the nucleus. But somehow this doesn't happen! Because of these counter-intuitive interactions, matter can exist. Physicists talk about smaller and smaller particles to help explain this phenomenon (quarks, gluons, and my favorite, neutrinos!), and have created the concepts of the strong and weak forces. And you can really get a physicist's mouth watering if you talk about the Higgs Boson, the Holy Grail of particle physics. But without Jesus holding all things together, this world would simply fall apart!

And one day, the Bible says it will.

All the Stars of the heavens will be dissolved and the sky rolled up like a scroll;
all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the fig tree. Isaiah 34:4

Jesus, who was there at the beginning putting it all together, will take it all apart. In Revelations 20, John speaks of Jesus at the end of all physical matter. "Then I saw a great white throne, and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them."

But this is all part of God's plan to have eternal fellowship with all believers who put their faith in Him. John goes on to say in Revelations that after all that has passed, then "the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

Boy, I really went off on a tangent there. I just meant to remind you about Daylight Savings time.