THE SUN

The colors and majesty of sunsets and sunrises are wonderful. During the “dry season” in the mountains of Papua New Guinea I would often contemplate the beauty of God’s creation, available in technicolor, with shadows and clouds reflecting through the sunshine. 

“God made a home in the sky for the sun; it comes out in the morning like a happy bridegroom, like an athlete eager to run a race. It starts at one end of the sky and goes across to the other. Nothing can hide from its heat.” (Psalm 19.5-6)

C.S. Lewis wrote a short essay called “Meditations from a Toolshed,” in which he observed how different it was looking directly at a ray of the sun compared to looking along the ray of the sun. When you look at a ray, you see dust and other particles floating around in the light, but when you look along the ray, you can imagine looking millions of miles, to the sun itself.

The brightness and heat of the sun make it the object of many myths and stories. We incorporate idioms about the sun in our everyday speech, such as “Make hay while the sun shines,” “A place in the sun” (a favored position), “a ray of sunshine” (a happy person), and “catch some rays” (spend time in the sun). 

Egypt was known for its veneration of the sun as a deity. It provided life and was a source of energy, warmth and sustenance. The Egyptian mythology believe that the sun god, Ra, traveled across the sky by night sailing through the underworld. It would emerge newborn each morning.

Norse mythology considered the sun as a goddess who drove a chariot across the sky, pursued by a wolf who would eventually eat her.

In Greek and Roman traditions, the Titan Helios drove a sun chariot. The sun was also later associate with Apollo, the god of light. The Hinu religion considered Surya to be the golden sun god, who also travel the heaven in a chariot.

Many ancient cultures aligned their temples and places of importance according to the direction of the sun. God gives us our feelings, and we look to the Holy spirit to help us interpret them spiritually.

Eclipses were prone to sacred ceremonies and some Navajo legends say that the sun, when hidden in an eclipse, would need special ceremonies and songs to restore it.

In the Bible, worship of the sun is forbidden. Leviticus 26.30 (in the NLT) seems to imply this when it says: “I will destroy your places of worship on the hills, tear down your incense altars, and throw your dead bodies on your fallen idols.” The prohibition is made very clear in Deuteronomy 4.19 (NIV): “And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven.”

Of course, it seems natural for people to look up at the sun, moon, and stars, which are illuminating the sky and are far from us. What mystical powers might they hold? Who put them there and why? These are not questions for evolutional observers, who see the elements in the sky as objects in time and space, with observable (for the most part) and measurable characteristics.

In a wonderful comparison, C.S. Lewis once stated, and with a true homonym, “I believe in “Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” 

The sun, moon, and stars were closely intertwined in the mythology of the Kewa people of Papua New Guinea. In their secret “Pandanus language” they all had the same name (aapaku), a word which occurs as paaku in some Kewa dialect areas.

In some languages that I recorded in the Gulf Province of PNG, the moon was also referred to as a “stone”, and it was always significant in stories.

In my NIV version of the Bible, the sun is mentioned 176 times.

God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day [the sun] and the lesser light to govern the night [the moon]. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good.”  (Genesis 1.14-18).

However, there will come a time when we will no longer need the sun. At that future time, “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there.“ (Revelation 21.23-25).

Karl Franklin