Excerpts

From Chapter One: “Lack of Light”—

While the Edwards family ate dinner and enjoyed family devotions, they watched through the sliding glass door near their dining table as the clouded sky grew dark and a brisk wind came up. In the distance, thunder rumbled softly, as if the storm was a large, purring cat. Andy squirmed in his seat; Arizona thunderstorms were so exciting. The children began counting the seconds between the lightning and thunder.
“Eight-one-thousand, nine-one-thousand—” a throaty, drawn-out rumble interrupted their counting, and Chris’ eyes grew wide as he felt the sound vibrations. The next instant, everything disappeared, re-appeared, and disappeared again.
“Oh!” the children cried in the darkness. Baby Collin began to whimper.
Then Brian said, “Power’s out,” quite matter-of-factly and switched on the flashlight he kept in a sheath on his belt. Everyone blinked in the small beam of light, and Mom took Collin onto her lap. His eyes were very wide, his little eyebrows were furrowed, and his lower lip stuck out. For a moment everything was very quiet, and they could hear wind howling around the house and heavy rain pounding on the roof. But one sound was clearly missing.
“It’s so much quieter in our neighborhood,” Danielle breathed, “without all the air-conditioners running. I never noticed how much noise they make.”
Another crash of thunder broke the silence then all was still again.
“I wonder how widespread the outage is,” said Dad, getting up. “C’mon, Brian. Let’s go upstairs and try to see across the valley.”
“And get some more flashlights,” the boy added. Mom hugged Collin so he wouldn’t be afraid of the dark when Brian left with his flashlight. A moment later, Dad, Brian, and the bobbing flashlight beam were upstairs.
“Wow, Mom; it’s so dark!” Chris exclaimed.
“Yeah, it reminds me of the nights at the cabin last month—it was so dark in those woods,” said Danielle.
A flash of lightning lit up the room. From somewhere upstairs, Brian’s voice floated down to them. “Wow! It looks like the power is out in the whole neighborhood and both shopping centers too.” If he said something next, nobody downstairs heard it, probably the boy himself did not either, for a crash of thunder fiercely shook the air.
Collin began to cry. “I felt that thunder!” said Chris, his eyes huge.
“Me too,” said Mom. “Don’t worry, Collin;” she comforted the 23-month-old, "it’s just a storm. The bright flash is called ‘lightning,’ and the loud noise is called ‘thunder.’ It won’t hurt you... it’s just loud.” Collin sniffled and hid his face in Mom’s shoulder.
Lightning flashed again, and Andy began counting seconds until the thunder rolled. “The storm is one mile away,” he announced.
“Mom?” said Danielle.
“Yes?”
“Why does it take so much longer for the thunder to arrive than for the lightning? Dad says thunder is made by air quickly expanding and then contracting because of the heat caused by the lightning bolt.”
“That’s a very good question,” Mom said. “The reason is that light travels much more quickly than sound does.”
A huge gust of wind slapped rain noisily against the sliding glass door despite the sheltering stucco patio. Chris jumped.
“How quickly does light travel?” Andy wanted to know.
Mom rocked Collin side to side in the darkness as she thought. “Seems to me light travels a little over 186 thousand miles per second,” she said.
“Really, Mom?” said Danielle, straining to see her mother’s face in the darkness. A helpful flash of lightning illuminated the room, and she saw that Mrs. Edwards wasn’t joking. “Mom, you said ‘186 thousand,’ right?”
“That’s right.”
“Miles?”
“Yes.”
“Each second?”
“Correct!”
“Whoa,” said Andy, “You’re right, Danielle, that is really fast. ‘Cuz 186 thousand of anything is a lot, and if you’re traveling that many miles in just one second... you’d be a blur of light!”
“Exactly,” said Mom. Lightning flashed twice in quick succession.
“How fast do we drive on the freeway?” Chris asked then covered his ears as thunder rumbled noisily outside.
“On the freeway we travel 65 miles in one hour,” Mom replied.
“Light is really moving fast, then,” said Danielle. “Even those beams of light are.” Dad and Brian were carrying several more flashlights and the LED lantern. Dad set the lantern on the table and turned it on. Thunder rumbled again. The family blinked at one another, everyone admiring the bluish tint of everyone else.



From Chapter Two: “The Missionary”—

As the food was being served, Brian asked, “Mr. Johnson, how long have you been a missionary?”
The man smiled and leaned his head to one side, calculating. “I would say it’s been right around 35 years.” Danielle looked up sharply, observing his mostly dark hair, his face showing only squint-lines at the corners of his eyes and smile lines around his mouth. She expected a person who had been a missionary for 35 years to look much older.
Mom also seemed to be wondering. “Do you mean that you grew up in an overseas mission field?”
Mr. Johnson shook his head. “No,” he said. “I grew up in the Midwest in a small town called Blackcrow. I first started sharing the gospel for Christ when I was 11 years old.”
“You did?” asked Andy.
Chris found his voice for the first time since the missionary had come into their house. “What do you mean?” he asked a little shyly.
“Well, when I was growing up, I went to a little school where I had three good friends. When I got saved at the age of 10, I began to wonder if these friends were Christians too. The more I wondered, the more I worried about their salvation. I wanted to make sure they knew the Lord and would go to heaven. But, as I thought about sharing the gospel with them, I began to be afraid. What if they laughed at me? What if they didn’t want to be my friends anymore? What if, what if? It took a year for the Lord to finally convince me, but I did begin to speak to my friends about Jesus.”
“What did they do?” Chris asked.
“Well, they didn’t laugh,” said Mr. Johnson. “But they didn’t become Christians right away either. For two of them, it took almost our entire time in school together before they finally accepted the Lord.”
“What about the third?” asked Dad.
“Well, I was discouraged about him. And worried too,” said their guest. “You see, he was older than me and the other two boys, so he graduated from high school before we did. He enlisted in the army right after graduating; this was near the end of the Vietnam War. Every day I prayed that God would save him soon. I prayed extra hard each time there was fighting. Well, one day, a letter came. He said he’d finally broken down and given his life over to Christ.”
“That’s great!” Brian said enthusiastically.




From Chapter Four: “The Chess Lesson”—

Just then, Dad opened the front door, and a shaft of sunlight pierced the dimness, making the glass piece in Chris’ hand sparkle. Gazing at the chess piece, Chris said, “Wow! Yesterday we were looking at the electromagnetic spectrum in Brian’s science book. It told about invisible kinds of light—things like gamma rays and infrared light. Visible light was such a tiny, tiny little part of the whole diagram, but I think it’s the prettiest.” Mr. Simmons didn’t say anything, but he had been listening. “Look, Mr. Simmons!” the boy said. “The chess piece is making a rainbow on your house slipper.” The old man looked down at his feet on the wheelchair footrests.




From Chapter Six: “Light in Life”—

Andy turned to look at the streetlights in the neighborhood. “It’s too bad there isn’t one big switch to turn them all off,” he said.
Dad straightened up and scratched his chin thoughtfully. He turned back to the telescope, saying, “I suppose you might say there is a switch that turns them all off—every day!”
“What do you mean, Mr. Edwards?” Michael asked. “I guess they are off during the daytime, but...” He watched their host, wondering what he would reply.
“I was just thinking about the sun.”
“The sun switches them off, Dad?” Andy said.
“In a sense, yes. Some streetlights have timers that tell them when to turn on and off. But some use photoresistors.”
“Photoresistors?” Brian echoed the word. “That sounds funny; like they’re resisting photographs or something.”
Dad laughed. “That is what it sounds like; but remember the Greek word photos means ‘light.’”
“Oh,” said Michael—for he and most of the Taylor family were listening intently, “then photoresistors resist light?”
Dad said, “Mmm, not exactly. A photoresistor, responding to different levels of light, regulates the amount of electricity that can flow through a circuit. In streetlights, the photoresistor controls the switch. When it is bright out, the photoresistor turns the switch off, and when it is dark out, it turns the switch on.”
“So the light from the sun really does switch off the streetlights each morning!” said Andy triumphantly. “That’s a pretty smart way to use light; otherwise, some man would have to walk along twice every day and turn the lights off or on.”
“Yes,” Dad agreed. “People have invented all sorts of practical ways to use the light God made on the first day of creation.”

(C)Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.

Read excerpts from the first book, "The Heavens Declare: Five Children, Eight Planets, One God" at www.heavensdeclare.info.