Oh, my goodness! An asteroid may be on a collision course with earth as we speak. Global warming will cause another ice age. World War III is imminent. Terror walks our streets. On any given day, these headlines and topics can be found in newspapers, on television and in conversation. How do we react? Does a sense of helplessness cloud our thoughts and paralyze our actions? For many that is exactly the reaction. Depression, anger, irritability linger just below the surface ready to pounce on our joy and muddy our relationships.
I was watching the History Channel during their fascinating series on Planet Earth; especially on the Sun. At the beginning of the segment on this near star, the narrator gave statistics about the sun as real photos of the surface and animated illustrations lit up the screen. He talked about how fortunate the Earth was to be in the exact orbit to sustain life. A few thousand miles nearer and it would burn with the heat of mercury; a few thousand miles farther and all would be frozen wasteland.
Then he continued with blazing illustrations of the sun going ‘nova’. When the surface gases would expand into a red star and actually engulf the near planets, Mercury, Mars, Earth… All life would be extinguished and the planets would burn into cinders. When the narrator had his audience sufficiently terrified, he casually mentioned that this would probably occur a few billion years from now.
Over the course of the last few years I have watched those channels which purport to be scientific and historical become more and more secular. As in the Sun segment, not even a question was raised on why the earth enjoyed such a life-preserving orbit. On another show I heard that scientists are still working on the puzzle of what holds all things together. I wanted to tell them, “Just read the first chapter of Colossians, where it says “in Him (Christ) all things hold together”! And, lately, they’ve discovered what they call “dark matter” and have decided, though they know not what it is, that this is what holds the universe together. I believe they’re coming closer to the truth, don’t you?
Who is in control? Are we helpless puppets waiting for some horrific end? Is our planet, Earth, heading for disaster? Well, yes. God has told us that the end of Earth will be with fire and great destruction. But it will be in His time and in His hands. All of us go through our own times of struggle and all lives end, period. But in the meantime, God holds us in His mighty hand and walks with us through all hardships as well as through all joys. He is before us, behind us, above and below us. There is no place He has not been and will not be. God is in control regardless of what the secular world believes. You can depend on that.
