I am writing this on the first day of November, also known as “All Saints Day”, having once again celebrated on Halloween the successful completion of another voyage around the sun – a voyage of approximately 584 million miles! 

And, for all of you who constantly complain about my slow driving, you will be happy to know that my average speed for this amazing journey was approximately 66,627 mph! 

And, that doesn’t even take into account the speed of the Earth’s daily rotation – another approximately 1000 mph!  [Actually, that’s the speed at the equator; my speed is a little less than that since I live some distance north of there, but maybe we can just round up to make all this calculating a little bit easier, ok?] 

And, our solar system is moving in its orbit around the center of The Milky Way Galaxy – so throw in another 448,000 mph!   

Finally, our Milky Way Galaxy is also moving in space at a speed of 252,000 mph!  Unfortunately, there appears to be no driver at the wheel of the Milky Way.  We are on a collision course with the Andromeda Galaxy, and in about 4 billion years, unless somebody does something, there’s going to be a spectacular pileup, and, I would think, another, and this time, final, Extinction Event for Planet Earth.  So that’s one more thing for Greta Thunberg to add to her list of “Things To Worry About”.  [I’m sorry – did I say that out loud?]

And here I was thinking that I never go anywhere!

The bottom line is, we are all living “Life In The Fast Lane”, but we can’t even feel it.  None of these tremendous speeds and tremendous distances have any effect on how we live our lives.  [Interestingly, rocket scientists do take advantage of some of this to assist in getting rockets to achieve escape velocity.  But, unless you are a rocket scientist, it’s all just numbers on a page.]

Maybe this strange “Life In The Fast Lane” fact – that our speed through space is unimportant to our daily lives – shows up in a similar way in another aspect of our lives.  To a huge portion of the population of this planet, the fact that Jesus lived, died, and arose from death, and is the only way to eternal life are all just words on a page, words that have no meaning or significance to their life.  Words that are just another fairy tale.  Words that are believable only to the foolish and gullible.

But, here’s at least one difference.  There is absolutely nothing anyone can do about the speed at which we are hurtling through space.  We are, after all is said and done, too tiny and too powerless to have any effect on any of that.  But, it only takes a spark of faith in the truth of the Jesus Story, just a flickering candle of faith [Matthew 12:20] to absolutely change the trajectory of a life, and the future of that family, and the futures of the people they influence to believe, and the futures of the people they influence to believe, and on and on.  Or, to put it another way, in the words of some unbelievers, recorded for all time to demonstrate the foolishness of rejecting the Jesus Story -  that spark of faith could “turn the world upside down” – Acts 17:6.

Aren’t you glad that the reality is that because of the Jesus Story, and because of all of those who had just a spark of faith in that Story, those saints whom we honor on this day, we are hurtling through space at unimaginable speeds, on a world that has been turned upside down? 

Ambrose Ramsey | Shepherd