The Holy Bible. Photo: Joshimer Biñas, pexels.com
My brother liked defying gravity. Attempts to get airborne and achieve ‘manned flights,’ involved crazy experiments – like crafting a dodgy home-made parachute using the lining of an old sleeping bag. As a gullible younger sibling, I meekly submitted to being his ‘crash-dummy’. After scaling a tall tree, we got positioned on an extending branch. He tied me to his contraption and said, “just jump, it’ll be fine.” My reluctance was overridden by a forceful push.
Murray Smith
I was tangled in string and fabric, plummeting earthward when a lower branch broke my fall. Bruises, trust issues and height-anxiety resulted.
My brother’s airborne pursuits progressed. He was conscripted into compulsory military training and his army division trained him to jump out of planes with real parachutes. Later hang-gliders followed – as well as involvement with pioneering parasailing.
I remain happily appreciative of gravity. Though its absence might seem fun, without gravity, life would be impossible. Without gravity sucking everything inwards to the centre of the earth, life on earth wouldn’t be sustainable. Losing this force which the earth exerts on everything around us, from pebbles to skyscrapers – even briefly, would unleash devastating impact on our lives. With nothing ‘anchored’ to the ground, cars, bikes, food, garbage, cows, horses, trees, your pets and you, would get pulled upwards, chaotically tumbling above the earth. Around the equator where the earth’s spinning is felt to the greatest extent. It would be disastrous.
Earth’s atmosphere and its gasses would float into outer space, leaving a drastic change of air pressure. It would rupture the inner ears of every living being on earth… and with no oxygen, we would suffocate. Earth is held together by gravity like a protective band – without this force exerting inward pressure, the earth’s core would expand outward, resulting in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions being triggered. With gravity’s critical role in sustaining the earth’s orbit around the sun, its absence would result in the earth racing off into space away from its crucially aligned ‘life-giving’ pattern in relation to the sun.
We owe a lot of understanding about gravity to Issac Newton. In 1665 this young maths and physics student in England observed an apple falling from a tree. It prompted him to ponder why objects always fell straight to the ground. This observation inspired his understandings and explanation of universal gravitation.
However, a much greater debt of gratitude is owed – to God. Behind the perfect order and balance within creation, is design and intentionality. It’s absurd to attribute everything to random, arbitrary events happening, which could then sustain our planet’s placement in the universe.
Planet Earth exhibits intentionality, pointing clearly to the Creator. The Bible explains that through visible creation, God shares and reveals His invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature. So, no legitimate excuse exists for not knowing God.
Significant gravitas surrounds this issue… trivialising any of God’s gifts, especially the unparalleled treasure of freely given salvation, is seriously the wrong thing to get wrong.
