How Are You Affected?

How are you affected when you listen to the beautiful singing of a bird or to a child learning to utter his first words? Do you perceive God’s wisdom in the things he has made?

After meditating on the way he was made, the psalmist David was moved to say to God: “I shall laud you because in a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, as my soul is very well aware.” (Psalm 139:14) As you appreciatively examine the wisdom of God evident in creation, your faith in his ability to provide you with sound guidance will surely grow.

God’s Power Revealed in the Stars

“Raise your eyes high up and see. Who has created these things? It is the One who is bringing forth the army of them even by number, all of whom he calls even by name. Due to the abundance of dynamic energy, he also being vigorous in power, not one of them is missing.”​—ISAIAH 40:26.

OUR sun is only an average-size star. Even so, its mass is 330,000 times greater than the mass of the earth. The majority of nearby stars are smaller than the sun. Other stars, though, such as the one named V382 Cygni, have a mass at least 27 times greater than our sun.

How much energy does our sun radiate? Imagine how fierce a fire would have to be if you were ten miles [15 km] from it and could still feel the heat. The sun is, on average, about 93 million miles [150 million km] from the earth. Yet, on a sunny day, its heat can blister the skin! Remarkably, only about one billionth of the sun’s energy strikes the earth. Still, this fraction of the sun’s power is enough to sustain life on the planet.

In fact, scientists have calculated that the total energy output from just our sun is enough to sustain some 31 trillion planets like the earth. Or to measure this enormous output another way: If all the sun’s power could be harnessed for just one second, it would provide the United States “with enough energy, at its current usage rate, for the next 9,000,000 years,” says the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) Web site.

The sun’s energy emanates from its core​—a nuclear reactor that smashes atoms together and spews out power. The sun is so big and its core so dense that it takes millions of years for the energy produced within the core to well up to the surface. “If the Sun were to stop producing energy today,” says the SWPC Web site, “it would take 50,000,000 years for significant effects to be felt at Earth!”

Now consider this fact: When you raise your eyes on a clear night, you are seeing thousands of stars, each disgorging vast amounts of energy, similar to our sun. And scientists calculate that there are billions upon billions of stars in the universe!

Where did all these stars come from? Most researchers now believe that for reasons they still do not fathom, the universe suddenly burst into existence some 14 billion years ago. The Bible simply states: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) Without a doubt, the One who created the colossal energy machines we call stars can be described as “vigorous in power.”​—Isaiah 40:26.