Pray For Peace
What are you doing for peace? We can't always find magical solutions ourselves that will transform former adversaries into being great friends. But we can always pray for peace.
We can pray to find peace in our own lives. We can ask our loving Father and powerful King, Creator and Sustainer of the universe, to help us have harmonious relationships with others.
We can pray to the Almighty to help specific people we know who are involved in a quarrel to bury the hatchet and smoke a peace pipe together, metaphorically of course.
We can pray to the Almighty for peace for our People and for all the nations of the world.
Every prayer has some effect. Every prayer elevates us spiritually. Every prayer connects us with the Creator of the universe and helps us gain a much more expansive perspective.
Love Yehuda Lave
who created the world?
Did G-d create the world or did it always exist? From the Bible the answer is clear, "In the beginning, G-d created the heaven and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). However, how about the scientists? What do they believe? Lawrence Kelemen sheds light on the question in his book, Permission to Believe.
Until the early 20th century the astronomers had 3 models for the Universe:
1) The Static Universe -- the Universe was either created or always existed. Mutual gravitation attraction keeps planets and stars together in solar systems and galaxies.
2) The Oscillating Universe -- the Universe expands and contracts. The Universe expands outwards until the gravitational forces slow the expansion, pulls everything back together for a cosmic implosion/explosion -- which starts the cycle again. This could have been created by G-d or have existed forever.
3) The Open Universe -- the Universe continually expands outwards until the stars burn out. "Such a universe could never bring itself back to life. It would come into existence at a moment in history, blaze gloriously, and then pass into irrevocable night." This model posits that all matter and energy was contained in a singularity, a dot that sat stable before it detonated. The paradox: Objects at rest remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force; since all matter and energy is in the singularity, what outside force could cause it to explode? This model of the universe implies a supernatural Creator -- G-d -- Who initiated the universe.
In 1916 Albert Einstein presented the world with his Theory of Relativity revealing the deepest secrets of the universe. However, scientists noted glitches in the theory. Only if the universe was continually expanding would the Theory of Relativity work.
How did Einstein respond? When Willem de Sitter, a Danish astronomer, sent Einstein a detailed response, Einstein ignored it. When Soviet mathematician Alexander Friedmann wrote Einstein in 1922 with his independently derived conclusion that the universe must be expanding in all directions at high speed, Einstein balked at the idea. When American astronomer Vesto Slipher actually observed through the Lowell Observatory telescope dozens of galaxies shooting away from a central point, Einstein resisted.
Einstein wrote a letter to a prestigious technical journal Zeitschrift fur Physik calling Friedmann's suggestions "suspicious" and to de Sitters' conclusion of an expanding universe, he wrote that it "...irritates me." In 1925 after examining the evidence presented by Edwin Hubble that every galaxy within the power of his telescope, the largest in the world, was receding, Einstein conceded that "New observations by Hubble ... make it appear likely that the general structure of the universe is not static."
In 1965 two Bell Lab scientists, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were calibrating a supersensitive microwave detector when they picked up a steady, three-degree Kelvin (3K) hum. They researched the literature and found an article by a student of Alexander Friedmann predicting that a remnant microwave radiation of the Big Bang should be detectable around five-degree Kelvin. And that's how they won the Nobel prize.
The "3K hum" was the death blow to the Static Model of Universe. The only question left: "Has the Big Bang happened numerous times -- or was this a one time only explosion?" The first model worked without G-d, the second one did not.
For 15 years scientists investigated the average density of the universe to determine if there was enough mass to stop the expansion and reverse of the universe. There wasn't. Dr. Robert Jastrow, Director of NASA Goddard Center for Space Studies, headed the project. His final observation is worth pondering:
"This is an exceedingly strange development unexpected by all but the theologians. They have always accepted the word of the Bible, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" ... (But) for the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance. He is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
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or http://www.yehudalave.com/
