Daily Gospel Chat | Jan 4 | The Creator of All Wonders

January 4

Tuesday

Out of the north comes golden splendor; God is clothed with awesome majesty. - Job 37:22 (RSV)

"Awesome!" "Radical!" "Oh, wow!" It is ten o'clock at night and my family is standing in the middle of a frozen lake in pajamas and coats if you can believe it. We're staring at the aurora borealis-the northern lights-flickering and flashing, cascading and dancing across the black-velvet sky. There is a curtain of green, a sunburst of yellow, a ribbon of pink. "Glory to God," I speak into the night.

Eskimos believed that the aurora was alive and if you whistled at it, it would come closer out of curiosity. Actually, the aurora is a gigantic electrical phenomenon, a series of flashes that occur simultaneously at the North and South Poles, discharging more electric power in one evening than the entire United States consumes in a year! Its origins are in the solar winds: high-speed, charged particles streaming out from the sun. When the solar wind's magnetic field intersects with the Earth's magnetic field-strongest at the poles we see the aurora. It's amazing how our universe is both mysterious and explainable all in one.

I see God like that, too. Some days I understand Him clearly and say with confidence, "I know Whom I have believed." Other days I cannot begin to comprehend His ways, and I fall back in awe before His mysteries. Aren't both perspectives important to believe? What I understand by faith causes me to trust God. But, oh, let there be glorious mysteries, too! They hold me spellbound, like northern lights flashing in the night sky.

Majestic God, known and unknown, I lay my love before Your throne. -Carol Knapp