The END OF THE WORLD?

Did you know that we now have predictions about the end of the world?

Many scientists have come to the conclusion that the sun will slowly expand into a red giant, pushing the Earth farther out into space, but not far enough. Our home planet will be snagged by the sun's outer atmosphere, gradually plunging to its doom inside the fiery stellar furnace.
"The drag caused by this low-density gas is enough to cause the Earth to drift inwards, and finally to be captured and vaporized by the sun," explains astronomer Robert Smith of the University of Sussex in southern England.

The good news: This won't happen for another 7.6 billion years.
The bad news: Life on Earth will end long before then.
In fact, we've only got a billion years left before the slowly expanding sun boils off the oceans and reduces our planet to an uninhabitable cinder, says Smith.

Is there any way our future descendants can save themselves? Why, yes, explains Smith.
He cites a recent study emanating from the University of California, Santa Cruz. It proposes taming an asteroid to swing by the Earth every few thousand years, slowly nudging the Earth into higher solar orbit, enough to outpace the sun's own outward growth.

Hmmm. Changing the earth's orbit will certainly do the trick.

Or consider the "Doomsday Vault", the ultimate safety net for the world's seed collections, protecting them from a wide range of threats including war, natural disasters, lack of funding or simply poor agricultural management.
On Tuesday, Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan environmental and political activist who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, placed the first seeds inside the vault, followed by other dignitaries.
The vault, located 427 feet inside a frozen mountain, received inaugural shipments of 100 million seeds ranging from major African and Asian food staples like maize, rice, and wheat to European and South American varieties of eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potato, according to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, which is paying to collect and maintain the seeds.
The Norwegian government paid to build the vault in a mountainside in the remote Svalbard islands between Norway and the North Pole. Web site: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, as it is officially known, can hold as many as 4.5 million seed samples and will eventually house almost every variety of most important food crops in the world, the Global Crop Diversity Trust said.
Well, now that we have that covered, I feel better. Don't you?

See: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332429,00.html
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/02/26/norway.seeds/index.html#cnnSTCText

Where is God’s love in a world of suffering?

It’s a nagging question that most every thinking person asks. And many of our answers are either shallow or just plain wrong. I do not intend to offer an answer to this dilemma, but just a thought to help us process this obvious dilemma of reconciling a loving God with a suffering world. After all, how could a loving God allow random acts of violence?

I think back to a story in the New Testament from Jesus’ life (John 5). He is in the city of Jerusalem near the Temple. He is at a place called Bethesda, a porch-like structure that had a small pool. It says “Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed.” The reason they were there was because of a belief, perhaps legend, that the first person to get into the water after it was stirred would be healed. And so they came, day after day, just waiting & hoping it would be their day.

When Jesus arrived, he found many disabled people there. What did he do? He healed one of them. Think about that. He could have healed all of them, but He healed one of them. What is that all about? All of a sudden, what happened to “God loves everyone”? Surely if he loved everyone, Jesus would have healed everyone, right? Apparently not.

Is there a lesson about love here? Is it possible that what we, humanity, think is “love” really is not “love”? If God loved those disabled people at the Bethesda Pool, but did not heal them, then perhaps love does not always make life more convenient or comfortable. It appears that love will allow suffering to continue sometimes. Hmmmm? These kinds of dilemmas always bring me back to Romans 11:33, msg: Is there anyone around who can explain God? Anyone smart enough to tell him what to do?