We have now passed the shortest day of the year; the days are now lengthening, the light increasing. The mornings, though, will continue to get darker until early January, whilst the evenings have been lengthening since mid-December. This is due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis, which means that the day (the time taken for the sun to do one complete circuit in the sky and get back to exactly the same point of the compass) is slightly shorter round the equinoxes and slightly longer round the solstices. Because we use an average day length through the year for our clocks, the sun gets a bit ahead of where it should be before the winter solstice, so sunrise and sunset are both a bit too early – but then slips back over the solstice to end up being a bit behind. It gradually creeps forward again over the spring, and back over the summer solstice.

All gloriously predictable; the beautiful movement of the heavenly bodies, entirely comprehensible by geometry and mathematics. How different this seems from the human world of chaos: despots rising and falling, conflicts erupting, pausing, ceasing – completely unpredictable. At the time I am writing this, Israel-Gaza peace talks are on a knife edge: will some form of agreement have been reached by the time you read it? I have no idea!

Yet the Psalmist reminds us in Psalm 75 (v3) that it is the same God who holds both the physical and human earth in his hands: ‘When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm’. God judges uprightly (v2) – always working out what will ultimately be the very best for us all, even if it is along a path that we cannot comprehend from our viewpoint down here in the weeds.

When the human world looks dark and chaotic and heading for oblivion, let us be reminded by the beauty of the natural laws given by God to govern the physical world, that his hands are about the human world too, and he will ultimately bring it to a glory and beauty that pales that of the physical universe into insignificance.

Andrew Partridge

St Andrew’s Church

Farnham