Tag: homeschool

Friday Factoid Week 10

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A Gideon Exclusive!

My favorite part about astronomy is looking at the moon. We look at it in our telescope and it has lots of bumps. The moon goes around the earth and the earth goes around the sun and the sun goes around nothing I think. And people have gone around the moon and people have gone on the moon. But Andrew says they didn’t. Here is my sticker picture that I made about the moon and about the earth and about space shuttles and I don’t want to go on one (dictated to Mom by Gideon, 5).

Devo 10

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“As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.  And behold, a dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.  Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.  But I will bring judgement on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.”  Genesis 15:12-14

In Exodus 10:21, the Lord says to Moses, “Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.”  As this descendant of Abraham lifted his arm did he know he was summoning through the power of God the fulfillment of those promises bestowed upon his slumbering ancestor?  Did Moses know he was summoning the same dreadful darkness God had caused to fall on Abraham?  Everything God had promised in that lop-sided covenant was now coming to pass.  Abraham’s descendants, enslaved to the Egyptians for 400 years were now innumerable like the stars.  But God was bringing judgement on the nation they served and this dreadful darkness was the ninth plague Moses had called down.  God had heard their cry and was coming to rescue His people.

Later, it was another descendant of Abraham’s who needed rescuing. In Psalm 18:6-19.  King David writes, 

“In my distress I called upon the Lord;  to my God I cried for help.  From His temple He heard my voice.”  And then David says, “He bowed the heavens and came down; thick darkness was under His feet… He made darkness His covering, His canopy around Him.”  And He rescued David.  “He rescued me from my strong enemy and from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me… He rescued me, because He delighted in me.” 

Hundreds of years later, God was on another rescue mission.  This time, not just for a king, or one people, but for every tribe and tongue and nation on earth.  God bowed the heavens and came down.  He came as a man, a descendant of Abraham and heir to David’s throne.  And He came to die.  And when He gave His life as a ransom for many, darkness, once again came over the land.  But this time, the plague was on Himself.  Jesus became the curse for us, right there on the cross.  Luke 23:44 says, “It was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed.”  

Oh, but listen to the prophet’s words in Isaiah 60:1-3!  

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples;  but the Lord will arise upon you, and His glory will be seen upon you.  And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

Jesus didn’t stay dead.  He rose again!  And by His death and resurrection He rescued us from our own strong enemies, sin and death.  He rescued us from the wrath of God against our sin.  He rescued us because He delighted in us.  Just as light shone for the Israelite slaves in their little corner of Egypt when darkness was over the rest of the land, the Light that brings light to the whole world arose from their own midst.  You need only cry out for rescue and God will hear and save!  Come, friend, to the brightness of His rising.

Friday Factoid Week 9

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Click here for a Flashback to what we were learning in our Hawaiian homeschool 6 years ago this week.

And click here for another Flashback that has to do with today’s topic.

Teacher’s Two-Cents

I haven’t added my two-cents to a Friday Factoid for a long time, so I’m doing one now and also giving the boys a break since you have 2 Flashbacks to nibble on and they’ve had a crazy busy week.

So I want to add my two-cents to the second Flashback above about the magnetosphere and the auroras it causes and this time my two-cents comes straight out of the bank of Job.

“Hear this, O Job; stop and consider the wondrous works of God . . . Can you, like Him, spread out the skies, hard as a cast metal mirror? . . . And now no one looks on the light when it is bright in the skies, when the wind has passed and cleared them. Out of the north comes golden splendor; God is clothed in awesome majesty.”

Job 37:14-22

Job is one of my favorite books in the Bible because I’m always amazed at the depth of scientific knowledge people of his time had and the conclusions they came to about God through what they observed in nature. They truly believed God made Himself known through creation.

The passage quoted above is a great example of that. It might sound very primitive and ignorant to our ears to hear an ancient person describe the sky as “hard as a cast metal mirror.” But when you think about the earth’s magnetosphere, that description actually makes a lot of sense!

The entire earth has a magnetic field surrounding it and its job is to pull harmful particles produced by solar winds away from the earth or reflect them back toward the sun. Sounds a bit like a mirror, right? The sky may not be hard as a cast metal mirror but it certainly has the reflective, metallic-like properties of one.

And what about that light people of Job’s day seemed afraid to look upon when it shone brightly after the winds cleared the skies? Where did that golden splendor come from? “Out of the north!” Sounds a little like the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis, doesn’t it?

And do you know what causes those auroras? The presence of that reflective magnetosphere of course! Some of those harmful particles from the solar winds get trapped in the magnetic field and crash into our atmospheric gases causing a beautiful light show.

Events like those should do nothing less than inspire us, like Job’s friend, to “Stop and consider the wondrous works of God.” He is indeed, making Himself known through them!