Northern Lights

I was concerned, worried even.

The pastor and I were in the parking lot of the church after an evangelistic meeting, and it was apparent a major fire had broken out in the mountains above us.

The orange-red glow in the distance slowly got bigger, growing in proportion to our anxiety. But after studying the glow a little longer, we realized the mountains were not on fire at all. What we were looking at were the northern lights! The aurora borealis and their cousins, the southern lights —the aurora australis— are formed when electrically charged particles from the sun collide with gaseous particles in the earth’s atmosphere.* The resulting, stunning light show is almost impossible to imagine.

I alerted my wife, and we scooped up our baby son and drove out into the country, hoping to get a better view of this amazing phenomenon.

We weren’t disappointed. We drove into valley, got out of our car, and watched in awe as shafts of red and green light knifed their way through the valley and passed us on their way to some other place.

It was our first time seeing the northern lights, and we have never forgotten that night in Northern California. It has been said that nature is God’s second book. While there is a very sound scientific reason the northern lights appear, their origin goes beyond science to the God of science.

The northern lights suggest to us that God is a God of beauty, of phenomenal creativity, and that He loves to amaze us with evidence of His power and brilliance. At the end of the sixth day of Creation week, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). While six thousand years of sin have marred creation and have obscured our view of the Creator Himself, there is evidence everywhere in creation of the existence of a loving God who delights to amaze His children.

Let the marvels of creation point you to the marvelous God of creation.