Three Rights Make a Left

WE HAVE COME FAR OVER THE LAST YEAR

As we face a new year, we mark the passage of time that, in a big universe, makes our little world seem small in comparison.

There is a line in one of my all-time favorite movies, Jeremiah Johnson that stars Robert Redford, that has always intrigued me. “You have come far, pilgrim.” It was told to mountain man Jerimiah Johnson by a crusty old veteran of rugged mountain life named “Bear Claw”. The story is based on a real-life of a mountain man in the Rockies who was called “Liver Eatin’ Johnson” who left civilization for the harsh and beautiful life of the mountains. “You have come far” isn’t a reference to distance but to Johnson’s journey from his old life to his life of survival as a mountain man.

I thought about how far we have come in a year, not just in time but in space. First, how far we have gone just counting the passing of days as the Earth rotates. The Earth spins at a speed of about 1000 miles per hour at the equator. The closer you get to the north and south poles the slower our planet spins. Where we are near Dallas, Texas, we are spinning at a speed of about 863 miles per hour. So, in the past year we have travelled about 7.5 million miles just counting the spin of the earth.

Over the past year we also traveled a complete orbit around the sun: about 91.42 million miles, and we haven’t even gotten to the big numbers yet.

Our entire solar system is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 141 miles per second. If my math is correct (and that’s a big if) over the past year we have traveled almost 4.5 billion miles, and we haven’t even left the galaxy.

This is the statistic that blew my mind: Our entire Milky Way Galaxy, along with hundreds of thousands of other galaxies, are traveling toward a dense mass of seen matter and “dark matter” that astronomers call “The Big Attractor”. For this discussion I am only interested in the Milky Way Galaxy and how fast it is moving toward this mass that is big beyond all comprehension. Our galaxy is moving toward it at a staggering 1,342,162 miles per hour. That means that just in the time it has taken me to write this column, we have traveled over a million miles through space. So, if you multiply that number by 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year you will find that our little planet, solar system and galaxy have traveled 11,757,339,120 or 11.5 TRILLION miles in the past year. That puts a whole new spin on the question of time travel. What I mean is that if you really could travel back in time just 10 years, would you go back to a spot where the earth was over a quadrillion miles back?

To say we have come “FAR” in the last year is a galactic understatement. I consider myself indeed fortunate to have travelled trillions of miles together with all of you, and I have to think that if our world only realized that we will be traveling together that far over the next year and every year after that, we might find a way to treat each other a little better. It also bolsters my faith that we are not alone. There is a God, He is in control, He is always with us, and He has prepared a place for His people after this life. A place that won’t be destroyed when our planet, our solar system, our galaxy, and hundreds of thousands of others crash into “The Big Attractor.”