The days of creation mentioned in Genesis 1 and 2 deal with Gods purposeful, creative acts, but what about Day 7? What did God create on the 7th day? Scripture tells us he rested, yet he was still exercising his creative power-by resting he created the very concept of rest, or Sabbath. Most Christians officially recognize the Sabbath on Sunday, though Jews and Eastern Orthodox Christians recognize Saturday as the Sabbath. Speaking from personal experience, when I abstain from my normal work on Sundays, I am able to focus my attention on creation and re-creation, which includes afternoon walks (and naps!).
Taking a walk on a sunny afternoon has several health benefits, but one of them is exposure to direct sunlight. Specifically, spending 30 minutes per week exposed to a type of ultraviolet light called UV-B helps your body create vitamin D3 which promotes bone health and prevention of autoimmune diseases, cancers, and cardiovascular disease. Of course, too much UV-B can cause sun burn and nonmelanoma skin cancer, but a little bit is actually healthy.
We don’t think of the daytime as a good time to do astronomy, but the Sun is a star and there are many astronomers who make their living studying it.
The world’s space agencies, including NASA, have launched many space probes over the years to study the Sun in detail. One of these spacecraft “the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)” is currently in space taking high resolution images of the Sun at many different wavelengths of light. To see a great movie of the Sun erupting a solar flare, see this link:
http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/gallery/assets/movies/Burst_right_304_best.mov. The images in this movie record ultraviolet light (around 30 nanometers in wavelength), which our eyes can’t see. Using special dark solar glasses to protect your eyes from the Sun’s brilliance (which can be purchased at http://www.rainbowsymphonystore.com/ for less than a dollar), sometimes you can see dark, quasi-circular sunspots, which are slightly cooler areas of the Sun.
It’s from sunspots that solar flares often erupt. Some types of solar flares have caused power outages on Earth! (Never look at the Sun without solar glasses and especially never look at the Sun through a telescope or binocular as permanent blindness will almost definitely result.)
So, on your next Sabbath-day walk in the sunshine, just remember that the Sun can be good for you and that it can be a fascinating astronomical object.
