Do You Know the Order of the Planets?

Photo credit: Cassini Project; NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

 Do you know the order of the planets?
Can you tell the clockwork in their circling?

Neither has man fully seen creation

Centered on the glory of the Son.

-- K. Hartnett, March 2000

Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)

Io Over Jupiter- a Different Perspective

This amazing image was taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft as it passed by Jupiter on its way to the planet Saturn.  Io is one of the four large “Galilean” moons of Jupiter, so named because they were discovered by Galileo in the early 17th century using the newly invented technology of his day- the telescope!  Galileo’s discovery demonstrated convincingly  that the earth was not the center of every astronomical body’s sphere of motion.  This was an important argument in persuading the scientific authorities of his day to accept that the Sun, not the Earth,  was indeed the center of the Solar System.  The scriptures make it very clear that all things in heaven and on earth are to be summed up in God’s glorious Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.  History is moving unalterably towards this culmination.  Does this perspective guide our living?

He is the image of the invisible God…For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible,… all things were created through Him and for Him.  And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together…that in everything He might be preeminent. (Colossians 1:15-18)

Astronomers know now that the Sun is the center of the Solar System and that all the planets, including the Earth, move in great elliptically shaped orbits around it.  This was not man’s understanding for most of recorded history, however.  It wasn’t obvious at all from our perspective on Earth that the planets  moved along curved paths- indeed they seem to zigzag across the night sky from month to month.  This poem is a playful consideration of what is real versus what is apparent.  One day we will see much more clearly how God’s central purpose to glorify His Son drives all of created history.