Spiritual Perspectives
The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

By Avrum Organick
Special to The Independent

I was pleased to find in last week's "Spiritual Perspectives" column by Sister Joan Brown a resonance with thoughts I have expressed in these same pages.

Brown speaks of her amazement at seeing green shoots and leaves from cuttings of a fig tree she had planted in her backyard evidence of the Lord's hand. "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein." (Psalm 24:1)

And I am grateful now to Brown for pointing out to me the verses from the Book of Job, "Speak to the earth and it will teach you..." (Job 12:8-10). And I take delight as I have in the past reading and pronouncing the ancient words in Hebrew, "See'ach La'Aretz V' T'orecah." And in our backyard garden the corn reached "knee high by the Fourth of July" and the tomato plants this weekend are flowering at last.

But other wonders continue to draw me away from our backyard and from our garden. A recent image from the Internet at www.astronomicalpictureoftheday captured from the New Horizon spacecraft on its way to Pluto showed Jupiter's spherical moon, Europa, emerging from the vastly larger of the sphere of the planet Jupiter.

I then remembered reading Galileo's description, using his first telescope in 1610, of four "stars" that appeared in different positions on different nights along Jupiter's equator. Forty years ago, as a hobbyist using a refracting telescope only slightly more powerful than Galileo's, I took delight in capturing Galileo's visual experience firsthand. But Galileo, the great genius, made his observations on many more successive nights, and from his observations and calculations brought to the world the stunning conclusion that the "stars" were small bodies that orbited with regularity about a larger body. Extending these observations, Galileo concluded, in support of the theory of Copernicus of the previous century, that the planets (including the earth) rotate about the sun (rather that the sun and the planets rotate about the earth).

My wonderment is complete. One of the four "stars" that orbit Jupiter is the moon, Europa, 3,121.6 kilometers in diameter and only slightly larger than the moon that orbits our own Earth.

The Heavens declare the glory of God

And the firament showeth His handiwork. (Psalm 19:1)

Ha shamayim M'soprim K'vod El

U'maasay Ya'dov Magid ha'Rakeeya.

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Avrum Organick, a retired physician, lives on the Navajo Reservation. He can be contacted at avrumorg@aol.com.

This column is the result of a desire by community members, representing different faith communities, to share their ideas about bringing a spiritual perspective into our daily lives and community issues.

For information about contributing a guest column, contact Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola at the Independent: (505) 863-8611, ext. 218 or lizreligion01@yahoo.com.