It has been hot. That summer sun has been shining down. Imagine if it wasn’t just the one sun, but there were TWO stars in our solar system!
That’s exactly what I’ll be talking to some 6th graders about tomorrow. One of my favorite parts of my Catechist Scientist ministry is when I get to speak directly with people about science and faith. I wish I got invited to do it more. This particular teacher asked me to talk to her students about STARS and our faith. Well, there is a lot you can talk about when it comes to stars, but one of the topics I’ll be mentioning is binary stars. I had never heard of them until recently, but this is when two stars orbit around each other.
It was interesting to know that we didn’t discover this phenomenon by seeing the stars up close like we can our own sun. Instead, someone observed what they thought was a single star far away that changed brightness in regular intervals. Can you imagine if our sun changed brightness every couple of hours? Our current knowledge of stars, these big balls of gas, tells us that this isn’t possible. So, the scientists investigated further.
What they found was that there were actually TWO stars and they were rotating around each other. When they were in a position that you could see both stars, you had twice as much brightness. When they were in front of each other, you only saw the light from the front star; it blocked the one behind it. Here is a diagram of the phenomenon.
When speaking about binary stars, Dr. David Bradstreet, an expert in the field, described these stars as dancing around each other. In fact, he related their dance to the dancing of King David when he praised the Lord. “David danced before the Lord with all his might.” (2 Samuel 4:16)
We are told time and time again to praise the Lord. Many of those scripture passages tell us to praise Him in dancing, but do we ever actually do this? I know I’ve praised God with singing, but am I ever completely taken with His love that I can’t help but dance for joy? I can’t remember a time when I did, and that is a shame. I’m going to change that this week. I’m going to DANCE in praise of God! I hope you will join me. You might feel a little silly, but maybe it would be easier if you had some praise and worship music to dance to. Here are a few that definitely make me want to get up and dance!
I hope that you will take some time to join me and the stars and dance to praise God.
