YOUR WORLD WILL CONTINUE IN JUST A MOMENT

When I hear the TV announcer say, "The world today will continue in just a moment, my mind asks the facetious question, "Has it stopped?"

"The World Today" is the name of the program but, hearing the spoken words makes it sound as if we have paused briefly in orbit.

I know of only one recorded time when this was supposed to have happened and then it was incorrectly described because the knowledge of astronomy hadn't progressed to the degree that it has today. When Joshua prayed for the sun and the moon to stand still, we hadn't learned that our world rotates around the sun, so it must be that our world stood still that day instead of the sun. There are all ~kinds of interpretations of this biblical event, including poetic hyperbole and a hailstorm that darkened the landscape, making the span of daylight and darkness appear to be altered. But miracles do happen.

I understand that the earth and all the other planets in our solar system are held in orbital place by exact gravitational pull of the other heavenly bodies. What an astronomical calculation that must be, every celestial object riding along on its own gravitational air rails, although the rails are not of their own making.

What if Earth did pause for a moment? Would the whole solar system be thrown out of kilter? Crash, boom, bang!

Whether you take Joshua's experience literally or not, it is an intriguing thought that if our world did pause briefly in its spinning, like a skipped heart beat, would it then start up again as if it is not quite ready to sail off to regions unknown to be captured by another solar gravitational system?

There is the old cynical request, "Stop the world, I want to get off." I guess everyone gives that a passing thought some days, especially when we think we haven't come much further in human relationship than we were in the times when Joshua's armies went marching through Canaan, ~slaughtering right and left the entire populations of cities, although in the realm of science we now know all about Newton's Law of Gravity and Einstein's Space Time Relativity. Well, some do.

Instead of Jericho, Ai, Beth-honor, Azekah, etc., today it is Split, Sarajevo, Mostar, Shrebrenica, etc., as well as a dozen or more other places around the world where one tribe or clan is trying to exterminate the other. Will it take the wind-up of the world and its falling out of orbit to stop the slaughter and bring human relationships up to par with science? But then science has made the atom bomb. Will that set us back in that field to be on a level with the lagging humanities? (I'm getting a headache).

If, like Joshua, I should pray for the sun to stand still or the earth to pause in rotation so that it would seem the sun was standing still, it would not be so that a battle could be successfully completed, it would be for the world's population to be shocked into stillness. Most great movements have been started by persons who sit still and think. They stop being participants for a while and become onlookers. Then they can more readily spot the problems. If the five billion plus people who inhabit the world today came to a shocking halt at the same time and became onlookers for a moment, our world, like a skipped heartbeat, might come back stronger in human relationships and its people start making plowshares out of swords.

Platitudes, platitudes! Tell these things to the Croats, Serbs and ~Muslims, Somalis, Cambodians, etc., etc. They wouldn't have time to ridicule you. They must get on with their ancient hatreds and power grabs. How can we put feet under the platitudes and make them march as Christian soldiers off to war? Don't expect the sun, moon or earth to stand still so you can think.

Stand or sit still yourself for a while. Maybe something like Newton's apple will fall on your head or Einstein's push-instead-of-pull theory of gravitation will tug some latent cure-all out of your brain. If nothing comes, don't be dismayed or depressed, your world will continue in just a moment. Hang on.

REJOICE!