It was Christmas Eve when the Nemethy family moved into their brand new home in Dover, Massachusetts. It was a cold, 24 degrees with the night temperatures going down to 12 degrees. Five inches of snow was on the ground. This doesn’t sound like the ideal weather for moving but once you get inside your nice, warm, new home, everything is going to be better. Maybe a fire will be roaring in the fireplace.
This was not the case.
The house was designed by physicist Mária Telkes. “Telkes, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1925, became a recognized pioneer in the field of solar energy. After working at Westinghouse Electric as a research engineer focused on energy conversion, she partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1940 on a solar energy conversion project that launched her decades-long innovations in harnessing the sun for power. Notable later efforts included a solar oven, funded by the Ford Foundation, and a solar still for converting seawater into freshwater, a U.S. government wartime project. By the time of her death, the “Sun Queen,” as she came to be known, had earned more than 20 patents.”1
The house imagined by Telkes would be the first solar powered house. Known colloquially as the Dover Sun House, it had two bedrooms and was only 800 square feet. On the second level, there were 18, 10-foot dark glass panels that absorbed and collected the sun’s energy. This was transferred to drums of glauber salts. A chemical reaction created heat that was pumped throughout the house.
The technology was experimental, and it soon began to fail. The Glauber salts are extremely corrosive, and it didn’t take long before they corroded their canisters and began leaking. By 1954, the experiment was over, and a furnace was installed in the home.2
Solar power is merely harnessing the energy of the sun and converting it into useful forms for our daily needs. It’s a form of energy that’s been in use for a long time.
Did you know that every Christian is “solar powered?” Consider these verses:
Romans 8:9-10 But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
2 Corinthians 13:5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?
Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
Ephesians 3:16-17 That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; (17) That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love.
At the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit indwells us. The Bible clearly teaches the doctrine of the Trinity: One God expressed in Three Persons. In the Romans passage above, the Holy Spirit is clearly equated with Jesus Christ. At the moment of salvation, the SON – not the sun – indwells every Christian. Therefore, I am SON-powered.
This “energy” – the working of God in my life – produces God’s work through me. None of this comes from my strengths, abilities, or anything else I might think I have to offer. I am nothing. The Lord is everything! It is HIS power that enables and energizes me to do that which is righteous and holy. As the song says, “Without Him, I can do nothing!”
I’ll take SON power over SOLAR power any day!
John 15:4-5 says, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. (5) I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.”
1https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/family-moves-into-first-solar-house-dover-sun-house
2https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/sun-queen-dover-sun-house/
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