While I always think of American Independence this month, I just found out that it is also the month of earth’s aphelion. Say what? This is when the earth’s yearly orbit around the sun takes it farthest away from the sun, about 1½% father away than it is at its perihelion, or its closest point to the sun, during January. What makes it really interesting, and odd to our thinking, is that some of our hottest days, (in the northern hemisphere), occur when our planet is farthest away from the sun, and our coldest days when we are closest to the sun. That’s because our temperature is controlled by the tilt of the earth on its axis, not its orbit around the sun.

In the northern hemisphere, during the summer months, the earth’s position on its axis makes the northern hemisphere closer to the sun than the southern, exposing our hemisphere to more of the sun’s light than the south, hence we are in summer and they are in winter. Since there is more land mass in the north than water, we collect more of the sun’s heat and it’s hot. In the south, even when they are rotated “closer” to the sun, there is more water than land mass, so the temperatures are moderated. (If all this sounds confusing, ask a science teacher, like Brian Davis—he’ll have a whole lot more time and space than one column in Tidings to explain it.)

But all that brings two thoughts to my mind. The first concerns the wonders of our Creator. He designed our planet so that we would experience the seasons—Genesis 8.22 says: As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease—but so that we would experience them comfortably. He made the summer come in the northern hemisphere at the time when the earth was farthest away from the sun. And in the southern hemisphere, He made the land mass less to regulate the temperature, (water takes longer to heat and dissipates it more quickly.) God is so wise.

The second has to do with our relative nearness to God. James 4.8 says: Come near to God and He will come near to you. There are times in our lives when we sense that we have been led to places that seem far from God, that we, in our “orbits,” have been taken far from the “Son.” I do not speak of those times we have run from God on our own. Rather, I speak of those times when God has sent us on errands seemingly far from the center of His Presence, way out of the comfort of His people and fellowship. At those times we need to “turn on our axis,” and lean toward the Son. We need to draw near – ever nearer – to Him at those times and experience the warmth of His Presence.

So, this month when you begin to feel the heat, remember that while the earth is as far away as it’s going to get from the sun, it’s warm because it’s tilted toward the sun, and that’s part of the wonder of God’s creation. And remember, too, that you can be just as “warm” as you “tilt” toward Him, even from “far away.” You think about that.

– Pastor Jim