If you were to ride Top Thrill 2 at Cedar Point, it’s fastest speed is 120 mph. Would you notice it? Travelling in a car on a highway in California, you are going to hit speeds of 80-90 mph just to keep up. Will you sense the speed? An F-18 fighter jet can reach speeds of 1,000 mph and achieve 7.5 Gs. Does the pilot feel this?
So, why don’t we feel the Earth move? “It rotates (spins) at around 1,000 miles per hour and orbits around the Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour.”1 You would think that we would start flying off the planet at that speed!
Scientists tells us that we don’t feel the Earth’s motion for a number of reasons. First, the motion of the earth’s movement is constant and steady. “If the Earth were to accelerate or slow down suddenly, everything on the ground would be uprooted from its present location and thrown off, resulting in nothing short of annihilation.”2 It takes a full 24 hours for the Earth to make a full rotation. That provides us with the second reason.
If a marble were travelling that fast, you would be able to see it – for a moment. Rotating that quickly would probably cause it to explode.
On the other hand, the circumference of the earth is astronomical! Around the equator, it is 24,901.461 miles. Measuring around the poles, the number is slightly smaller: 24,859.734 miles. The motion of this huge sphere would be undetectable by its inhabitants if it weren’t for night and day. Today, we will have just over 16 hours of light from the first light at 5:18 a.m. to the last light at 9:37 p.m.
Another reason this motion is undetectable and why we don’t fly off this spinning sphere is because of gravity. God created this world with just the right amount of gravity to keep our feet firmly planted – until we stumble or trip!
Thinking about this is a bit overwhelming. But there is something that moves faster than a rollercoaster, car, F-18, or even the planet.
It’s time.
Just like the Earth, the passage of time is nearly undetectable. Then, you wake up one day and utter those immortal words, “Where has the time gone?” Time slipped away so quickly. Most likely, we didn’t appreciate or even acknowledge our youth, strength, and vitality. We just used it up as if there was an endless supply. The onset of a few gray hairs and achy joints was dismissed as normal. Then, you woke up one day and saw wrinkles, mostly gray hair, and the joints wouldn’t quit hurting.
Where did the time go?
James 4:13-15 says, “Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: (14) Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. (15) For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.” Job lamented in Job 7:6, “My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.”
We might be able to ignore the speedy movement of the Earth, but we dare not ignore the brevity of life. As the famous line from a C.T. Studd poem reminds us, “Only one 
life ‘twill soon be passed, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
With that in mind, we cannot mourn for the rapid dwindling of our years. Instead, we must focus on applying two vitally important verses of Scripture. I leave them with you on this Lord’s Day.
Psalms 90:10, 12 The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away…(12) So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.
Ephesians 5:16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
1https://theplanets.org/why-dont-we-feel-earth-move/
2https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/why-dont-we-feel-the-earth-spin-on-its-axis.html
Images are taken from https://pixabay.com/, https://www.pexels.com/, or https://unsplash.com/images or created in Windows Copilot. According to the websites, they are Royalty Free and free to be used for our purposes.
