Our solar system is like an air bubble in a pond.

The study of creation and of Jesus Christ are contiguous, not unrelated activities.

  - Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology 1: Nature

For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowlege of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

  - Colossians 2:1-3

Today I learned that the environment just outside our solar system is not the same as the environment within it. Space beyond our solar system is of a different composition, according to a report from the Associated Press. Alicia Chang explains that there is more oxygen in our solar system than beyond, as discovered by "NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer spacecraft, which launched in 2008 to study the chaotic boundary where the solar wind from the sun clashes with cold gases from interstellar space."

Our solar system, it appears, is like an air bubble in a pond. Within it life can exist which requires a regular supply of oxygen. Beyond it, well, bring your own scuba gear (or whatever the interstellar equivalent might be).

Now that's worth knowing. But it's also worth asking: Why? Isn't  the vast cosmos supposed to be everywhere the same? Now we're learning it isn't? Now it appears that at least in this neck of the cosmos an air bubble has been provided allowing us the privilege of sharing this little conversation without gasping for breath.

As a Christian I want to say, "Thank You, Lord!" And I want to spend some time meditating on what this phenomenon tells me about the depths of God's love for creatures like us who depend on oxygen, and about the mystery involved in how the cosmos is like a pond with at least one air bubble in it, and how great and wise and wonderful is He Who made and upholds it all, and Whose wisdom and knowledge the vast cosmos refracts.

Science ought to have more doxology in it. Our task as Christians is to inject that heavenward glance, that element of liturgy into the otherwise sterile secularism of scientific research and instruction. The heavens are telling the glory of God! The cosmos reflects the wisdom and knowledge of Christ!

Surely the least we can do is acknowledge and celebrate this as His children and servants.

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T. M. Moore

Senior Theologian and Historian