The veil nebula is part of the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant that covers an area of the sky 36 times the size of the full moon. At a distance estimated to be between 1,400 and 2,600 light years, the source supernova exploded some 5,000 to 8,000 years ago. This represents part of the expanding shell from that long ago explosion. The bright star overlapping the nebular filament is 52 Cygni. www.The-Love-Of-God.Com

Understanding Wisdom, and Finding Truth

Is the love of God real, even in today's age of space travel, atom splitting and reason? Yes it is. And it is only right to return that love. After all, it is His universe.

There are two definitions to "the love of God." The first is God's love for us. It is pure and everlasting. It is unwavering. God has never stopped loving all of his children. The other definition of "the love of God" is that of our love for Him. Can our love remain pure and everlasting? Can our love flow to Him in an unwavering manner? Sometimes life makes such love difficult, if not seemingly impossible. The purpose of this website is to attempt to answer the concerns that seem to make our love for Him so difficult at times, and to add inspiration to our love to help it grow.

The Love of Science

Some Christians have taken up a battle with scientists because science does not seem compatible with their interpretation of our most sacred book. Science should never replace the love of God, certainly. But we should not ignore God's gifts, and science is one of those gifts, as is the intelligence to understand. Just as important, we should continue to search for truth with humility — the same humility that the very best scientists use. And if you think you already know the truth, then walking on water should be easy.

The Mice (NGC 4676), are two galaxies suffering the aftermath of collision. Picture courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

One apparent rift between biblical literalists and science is over a timeline for humanity and the universe. To the literalist, Man and the cosmos are both about 6,000 years old. It would come as a great surprise for them to learn that Genesis does not give us this date. The honest, but incomplete interpretation of Ireland's seventeenth century Archbishop Ussher gave us the date 4004 BC, but that was based on a very limiting, literal interpretation of the Bible's first book.

The Love of Truth

Astronomers have given us dozens of pictures of galaxies suffering the aftermaths of collision. But let us start with a definition. What is a galaxy? A galaxy is a group of stars held together by mutual gravitation with a population ranging from ten million to a trillion stars (10,000,000–1,000,000,000,000). What is a star? It is a large ball of gas thousands to millions of times the mass of our own planet Earth. In fact, our own sun (also a star), is a ball of gas 332,900 times as massive as our Earth. When you look into the night sky, all of the stars you see are in our own Milky Way galaxy, and this is one of billions of known galaxies. The great darkness of the sky is partly from the great distance between stars. A galaxy is mostly empty space. The result is that galaxies are huge beyond most people's comprehension.

For two galaxies to pass one another, and for billions of suns to spill out into intergalactic space from their gravitational tides, as is shown in so many photographs, takes millions of years. There is no deception. The universe is far, far older than 6,000 years, and that makes God no less magnificent to have created a very old cosmos.

The Bible handwritten in Latin, on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England. This Bible was transcribed in Belgium in 1407 for reading aloud in a monastery. Picture courtesy Wikipedia.org.

The Holy Bible

There are many secrets hidden in the Bible. Some of them are easier to discern than others. Yet, there are numerous interpretations, and on some passages no compelling consensus. Why would it be important to understand the Bible? With understanding, comes wisdom, and with wisdom comes the clarity of thought to glimpse truth. Patience and humility help greatly, here, but frequently the love of God proves just as valuable in our quest for that truth. Why? Our mortal intelligence is fallible. Yes, this applies even to scientists. Our ability to see truth is clouded by prejudices and preconceived notions — like the dust lanes of our galaxy that blot out part of our view of the universe beyond.

James Gleick, in his bestseller, Chaos: Making a New Science, tells us, "Shallow ideas can be assimilated; ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility." Asking God can generate some powerful answers that come to us as inspiration. I've had this happen on numerous occasions, and only later did logic find the connections to validate the answer received.

However, we should never be satisfied with the answers we interpret. Frequently, our interpretations are flawed or incomplete, or sometimes colored by our distance from the truth. Humility allows those answers to find new meaning the closer we get to the source of all meaning. And the more we value the love of God, the easier it is for that meaning to come to us. Thus truth can come to us in layers, becoming gradually more complete and clear.

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