Trinity in Nature

Recently one of our pastors mentioned that as Christians are likened to the moon. Our responsibility is to take the light from the sun and reflect it on to the earth. To me it was a beautiful image of how we share in the spreading of God’s love, including the idea that the world is dark and that the sun and moon work together to share the light.

The next day I was snapping pictures from I25 on our way home from a baseball game. I love that I can see the Rocky Mountains every day and in this particular picture I love the way the sun's rays stream down through the clouds. I've always been in awe of the sun's capabilities.

But of course, my little brain couldn’t stop there. I had to investigate the sun and how light (really energy) was generated and sent here to earth. I knew about nuclear fusion, but wanted to dig deeper into what the sun was made of and how the process worked. 

“The Sun is a huge, glowing sphere of hot gas. Most of this gas is hydrogen…” 

From our previous discussions (mostly on water, my favorite topic), we already know that the hydrogen element, H, has the atomic number of one because the electrically neutral atom has one proton in its nucleus and one electron circling outside the nucleus. The following link shows a picture of a hydrogen atom at the top left hand side:  https://archive.stsci.edu/fuse/scisumm/sci_d2h.html

Notice the first picture there shows the atomic structure of a single hydrogen atom.

 

My Hebrew teacher, Dr. Elefant, used to like to remind me that God is one. Many times we talked about how the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, aleph, was rich in the meaning and wisdom relating everything “one.” So here too, I use the symbolic nature of one to liken hydrogen and God.

Within the sun, there’s another type of hydrogen atom in glowing sphere of the sun called deuterium. It is still a hydrogen atom, but it’s called “heavy hydrogen” and is designated as 2H. It is a stable isotope of hydrogen. (Isotope just means that the element has the same number of protons, but a different number of neutrons.) A picture of a heavy hydrogen atom is shown in the same picture as before, it's just located right below the hydrogen atom.

As Christians, we typically consider Jesus to be the second person in the mystery of the Trinity. For Scriptural reference, I use John 10:30, when Jesus said that he and the Father were one. Often the Holy Spirit, or the Advocate, is described as the love proceeded from the Father and the Son (see John 15:26). 

For the sake of our discussion, I will use 2H to represent Christ.

Back to the sun. When the hydrogen and heavy hydrogen (H and 2H) come together, they fuse and create energy. It’s called nuclear fusion. 

I found a very simple video that breaks the idea of nuclear fusion down to simple terms and will help you see and will not only help you understand the concepts we are talking about here, but the images will put it all together for you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pusKlK1L5To

So the hydrogen and the deuterium come together and create the energy (light) that is sent to earth.

That light is likened to the Holy Spirit and that spirit is spread to us. The energy we feel inside is the Holy Spirit beckoning us to transfer that light to others.

And such is the translation  nature to our concept of the Trinity. 

I am always in awe of how God uses nature to describe Himself and His process of loving us.

Go back and watch the video again. Pay particular attention to the words and images around 1:30. Gravity. Love. It’s what we’ll be talking about on this blog in the near future!