Sunrises And Sunsets

Part of my morning ritual during the week is to climb into my truck, start the engine and then as the motor warms up dedicate the time of solitude to prayer. At this time of year, dawn is beginning to break. I love how after my prayer time, when I open my eyes it’s slightly brighter outside. By my communion with God in prayer, I literally feel like He has shown His light upon me!

This morning after I opened my eyes, I noticed in the eastern part of the sky some deep oranges and reds beginning to emerge as the sun was drawing closer to the horizon. I’ve spoken before about general revelation, and how God reveals Himself to us in nature. For me, sunrises and sunsets are one of my favorite times to see God reflected in nature’s beauty. The magnificent displays of color in the skies is often breathtaking, and I will always find time out of my morning or evening to pause and admire this blessed gift God has given us.

This morning as I was driving to work, I began to think about sunrises and sunsets, and I was preparing in my head a message about how the colors we see in the sky are actually a product of pollution in the air, but God still uses that filth and has grace on man’s abuse of resources to still present something beautiful for us. I was going to talk about how we don’t deserve sunsets, yada yada yada.

But then I decided to do a little research before I began writing, and guess what? The colors we see in sunrises and sunsets are not caused by pollution in the air. It’s an urban myth!

According to Steven Ackerman, professor of meteorology at UW-Madison, the colors of the sunset result from a phenomenon called scattering, when molecules and small particles in the atmosphere change the direction of light rays, causing them to scatter. Scattering affects the color of light coming from the sky, but the details are determined by the wavelength of the light and the size of the particle. The short-wavelength blue and violet are scattered by molecules in the air much more than other colors of the spectrum. This is why blue and violet light reaches our eyes from all directions on a clear day. But because we can't see violet very well, the sky appears blue.

Scattering also explains the colors of the sunrise and sunset. Because the sun is low on the horizon, sunlight passes through more air at sunset and sunrise than during the day, when the sun is higher in the sky. More atmosphere means more molecules to scatter the violet and blue light away from your eyes. If the path is long enough, all of the blue and violet light scatters out of your line of sight. The other colors continue on their way to your eyes. This is why sunsets are often yellow, orange, and red. And because red has the longest wavelength of any visible light, the sun is red when it’s on the horizon, where its extremely long path through the atmosphere blocks all other colors.

Pollution in the air does contribute to this phenomenon, but it is not the cause.

Fascinating as this bit of knowledge is, there is a greater lesson to be learned. What this series of events reminded me of is that we must never take information we hear or read as truth just because someone tells us it’s true, or because large groups of people think that way. How many times have you forwarded an email or some other bit of trivia only to find out later through snopes.com or some other source that it was false? An urban legend?

The Bible tells us of a group of people in Greece that had great discernment and were skilled at dispelling falsehoods.

“The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” (Acts 17:10-11 ESV)

The Berean people were hungry for God’s Word, but they also had great discernment. They had a reputation for checking everything they heard against God’s holy word as revealed to them in scripture.

As Christian believers, we have that same responsibility. We must always check what we hear, or what we are taught against what God says. This is how false teachers gain dominion over so many followers. False teachers will stand before you disguised as men of God preaching a message of lies and deceit because they know their followers aren’t going to do their own research. They prey on people that follow blindly without discernment.

Any time you receive information presented to you as fact, it is your responsibility to check it’s validity. Be your own myth buster! Don’t be lead through live by lies and misrepresentations. With today’s technology, you can dispel any myth in mere moments. It took me about 2 minutes to discover the truth about sunsets! But don’t just go with the first answer. Be like the Bereans. Do a thorough search and check a few different reputable sources.

Demand truth in your life. Don’t let others make those decisions for you.

I pray that you now look at sunrises and sunsets in a new way. I will never look at them again with a twinge of guilt that the beauty I am beholding was a byproduct of the industrialization of mankind. Now I am free to accept those awesome displays of radiance and beauty as a gift from God; a tangible display the glory of God as reflected in nature. I will also be reminded to seek the truth in all matters and not trust everything I hear. Makes them even more special now, doesn’t it?