What’s In The Center?

It occurred to me this week that God may have positioned the sun in our solar system so that He could teach us something about Himself. I’ll talk more about that in a minute, but first let’s explore some fascinating things about the sun.

Our sun is incredible. Not only is it very hot, it is also really, really big. If the sun were hollow, it could hold 1.3 million earths. Imagine that! The sun is so big that scientists estimate that it can continue to burn at its present rate for another 5 billion years, even though, get this, it’s using up 600 million tons of fuel every second.

Long ago scientists used to believe that the earth was the center of our solar system. In the 4th century before Christ, two famous Greek thinkers, Plato and his student Aristotle, taught that the earth was in the center of the universe. It wasn’t until 1543 that Nicolaus Copernicus published a book claiming that the sun was really in the center of the solar system. Then, finally, in 1610 Galileo was able to use the newly discovered telescope to prove that the sun was in the center of the solar system.

There is another reason we now know that the sun must be the center of our solar system: The sun is the biggest and the heaviest object in our planetary system. It is the sun’s huge gravitational pull (because of its weight) that makes the rest of the planets revolve around it. The path that the planets take only makes sense when we understand that the sun is in the center.

Those facts got me to thinking. Perhaps God made our solar system to illustrate how our lives should work.

The Hebrew word that is translated “glory” in the Bible has the idea of “considerable weight” or “heaviness.” Keep that in mind as you look at Psalm 19:1: “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.”

God is the “weightiest” thing in the universe. Since God made everything, He has the right to be worshiped as the “glorious” center of everything, including our lives.

If we really believe that God is worthy of our worship and obedience, it will show. He will come first in everything we do. For example, when God’s will is different from our will, we will choose His will over ours. In other words, we will bow to God as that ultimate, weighty authority Who has the right to control us.

It is a tragedy that we tend to put so many other things in the center of our lives instead of God. Sometimes we center our lives around acceptance, money, pleasure, and material things. Even some good things like children, friends, and jobs can push God out of the center where He should be

When we give more weight to anything in our lives other than Almighty God, things will spin out of control. When that happens, we may try to fill the emptiness we feel by cramming even more things (other than God) into our everyday lives. Some may even engage in harmful behaviors, hoping to numb the pain that life without God brings.

The truth is that life works best when God is in the center of everything, because He designed us to love and worship Him. That’s why the greatest commandment is to “… love the lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). When we truly love the Lord, we get to do what we were made to do. That is exciting!

Before we can love God, though, we must know WHY we should love Him. There are many reasons, but here is the most important one: Jesus loved us enough to give His life so our rebellion against God could be forgiven. “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation