Do you realise that you should be dizzy right now?
That’s because you are, right now, travelling at the speed of 66,000 miles per hour around the Sun. That’s how fast the Earth flies as it orbits the Sun: 19 miles per second. “One thousand one.” In the time it took me to say that, whoosh! We just flew 19 miles. It’s a journey of 595 million miles, and takes about 365 days to finish. So you are flying 66,000 mph.
But while you’re flying at 66,000 mph, you’re also spinning. At the equator, the Earth is spinning at some 1,000 mph! Revolving on its axis every 24 hours, giving us night and day. So you’re flying at 66,000 mph, and at the same time you’re spinning at 1,000 mph.
But while you’re doing all this, you’re also leaning to one side. The axis of the earth (the imaginary line that connects the north and south poles) doesn’t stick straight up in relation to the Sun; it tilts about 23 ½ degrees. This gives us the seasons, the northern half tilting toward the sun in summer and away from it in winter.
So you’re flying at 66,000 mph, spinning at 1,000 mph, and leaning to one side. But that’s not all. In addition, a foreign object is flying around your head! That foreign object is the Moon. While the Earth flies on its orbit around the Sun, the Moon flies on its own orbit around the earth, once about every 29 ½ days.
I told you that you should be dizzy right now! What if you were asked to run around the inside of this (room) at a full sprint — while spinning in circles the whole time, leaning just so to one side, and doing rope tricks around your head? You’d be lucky to stay on your feet one time around. And what if we added a little pressure, and said that the fate of 6 billion or so people rode on your ability to stay on your feet? That would be pretty scary.
But this is the feat that our all-wise and all-powerful God pulls off thousands of times without variation or stumble in our solar system. So precise is His engineering, so perfect His calculations, all these variables—at awesome speeds, and incredible masses—somehow work just right over and over again! How can anyone believe that all of this happens by accident?
Reference: Seven Reasons Why You Can Trust the Bible, Erwin Lutzer, pp. 140-143
From: http://www.illustrationsforsermons.com/
Image: Australia Post celebrated its 2015 Stamp Collecting Month (SCM) with the launch of the ‘Our Solar System’ stamp collection. The collection featured eight spectacular planets that orbit our Sun. Courtesy: https://australiapostcollectables.com.au/