HEAVENLY SUNSHINE!

The sun is enormous! Almost one and a half million planets the size of our earth could fit into it. Although the sun is very big, to us it looks small. This is because it is so far away, 150 million kilometres from the earth.

The sun is tremendously hot. The hotter something is the more brightly it glows. But the sun is not a ball of fire. It’s a ball of gases squeezed so tightly together that its centre is actually solid. Its centre is like a giant atomic furnace with a temperature of about 15,000 degrees Celsius! From its hot centre energy pours out and rushes into space as waves of light. The waves of light spread out in all directions. They travel 300,000 kilometres in one second! That’s like going around the earth six times every second! Most of the light waves speed on into the endless darkness of space. But some head straight toward us!

What else does the sun do? It makes us feel warm! And it does much more; it gives us energy to live and move.

To reach earth the sun’s light travels through the earth’s atmosphere. On earth the sun’s light hits the leaves of green plants. The sun’s light is trapped in each cell of every leaf. In each cell there are little blobs of green stuff called chlorophyll. Each of the little blobs of chlorophyll catches and holds tiny bits of sunlight, little sparks of the sun’s energy. The cells use these little bits of sunlight for power. Chlorophyll turns the water and gases in each cell into a kind of sugar. This sugar is stored-up energy. This energy makes the plant grow.

When we eat plants, such as vegetables and fruits, the energy stored up in them gives us the energy we need to live. When we eat meat we get more of this energy from the plants eaten by the animals we eat. All living things must take in energy in order to stay alive. Nearly all of this energy comes from the sun.

The sun also gives us night and day. As the earth turns, every part has sunlight shining down on it some of the time. The rest of the time there is darkness. This is our night and day.

The sun gives us the seasons. As the earth moves around the sun the north pole is slanted either away from the sun or toward the sun. When the north pole is slanted away from the sun, the north gets less of the sun’s rays; this is winter. When the north pole is slanted toward the sun, the north gets more of the sun’s rays; this is summer.

What makes the sky blue? Sunlight does! All the colors of the rainbow are in sunlight. As sunlight passes through the air the colors are scattered. On a clear day when the sun is high in the sky, blue is scattered most of all. So the sky looks blue.

What makes the wind blow? The sun does that too! Sunlight warms the ground. The heat from the ground warms the air. As the warm air rises, cooler air rushes in to take its place. The movement of the cooler air is the wind. Wind is moving air.

Most rocks are made of minerals, material that is not alive. But there is one kind of rock that is not made of minerals; it is made of green plants! This is coal.

Coal is a black rock that is formed from the remains of plants that died and were buried long ago in swampy, muddy land. Over time more plants, water and sand pressed down on them and they were squeezed into hard rock. Coal is sometimes called "buried sunshine" because it is formed from plants buried for a long time.

What does God say about the sun? God made the sun for the earth and for us, to give us light and to form night and day (Genesis 1:15-18). God made the sun to give us seasons. In Genesis 8:22 God promises that the earth will always have seasons.

In Joshua 10 the sun helped the Israelites defeat their enemy, the Amorites, in battle. Joshua prayed for help and the sun stayed in the same spot for an entire day. God says the sun will never do this again, but it was God’s way of helping the Israelites win the battle against the Amorites.

Revelation 1:12-18 says that God's face is like "the sun shining in full strength."

God says we are not to worship the sun. In 2 Kings 21, King Manasseh leads the people to do things that are against God. One of these things is to worship the sun. God is very angry with them and punishes them for this. God wants us to worship only Him. He says He is our sun and shield; Psalm 84:11. He is our guide.