May 2 - Pluto, Where Are You?
May 2
Pluto, Where Are You?
Bible Reading: Matthew 6:22-23
22“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
EVER HEAR OF Pluto? No, not Mickey Mouse's dog. We're talking about the dwarf planet in our solar system.
Did you know that there was no proof, until 1930, that the Pluto existed? People knew about Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. They had even discovered two "new" planets-- Uranus and Neptune. But the solar system was still one player short of a baseball team.
A lot of scientists suspected--because of the way Uranus and Neptune traveled around the sun--that there was probably a ninth planet in the solar system. But they couldn't prove it; they couldn't see it. The telescopes way back then just weren't powerful enough. However, a scientist named Percival Lowell had predicted the existence of another planet. He tried hard to prove his suspicion, but he died in 1916 without doing so.
Then, in 1929 a special camera was built and installed at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, just to try to find the planet Percival Lowell predicted would be "out there."
In January 1930, Clyde W. Tombaugh was taking photographs of the area where the unknown planet should be. As he compared the photographs from two different days he noticed a "dot" that moved in a way that could only be explained if it were the planet. Clyde Tombaugh had "discovered" Pluto, something Percival Lowell had never been able to do because he didn't have the right telescope.
A lot of people "suspect" that some things are right and other things are wrong. A lot of people figure that hating and hurting people are both wrong, for example. They have a "feeling" at least most of the time--that dishonesty is bad and honesty is good. They have a "hunch" that "right" and "wrong" are out there somewhere, but they have trouble "finding" them and "proving" their existence. Proverbs 4:19 explains that "the way of the wicked is like complete darkness. Those who follow it have no idea what they are stumbling over."
When we believe God's Word and accept him as the standard for right and wrong, we're able to see things more clearly. And that makes our choices much easier. We don't have to "guess" or "suspect" what's right or wrong. We don't have to depend on our hunches. We just have to believe what God says.
REFLECT: Do you think the fact that many people don't believe in the Bible affects whether or not it's true? Why or why not? Do you have trouble believing what God has said about right and wrong? Or do you tend to see choices between right and wrong more clearly than your friends or classmates who don't believe the Bible?
PRAY: "Lord, be the lens through which I see everything, especially decisions about right and wrong. Make clear to me what is the right choice, and help me to discover and follow the right way."