OUR PERSONAL PATH TO SOLAR POWER

…energy for free and the ‘history’ behind it…

We have decided to install solar panels on our house.  Here is a little background: 

Genesis 1:3 tells us “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”  [ESV page 1]

But there may be more to the story.  Some time between November 1946 and February 1947, a Bedouin shepherd named Mohammed edh-Dhib discovered a scrap of papyrus in a cave on a riverbank.  The fragment turned out to be part of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  

This priceless discovery opened the world’s eyes to secrets that had been lost to eons of dust and time.  It was translated first into Bedouin, then several other Fertile Crescent languages, and finally into English about a decade later.  After painstakingly looking at so much history and culture described in this antiquity, researchers were stunned by a singular passage.

The Scrolls revealed what the Lord actually said in Genesis:

“Let there be a main sequence star that generates its energy by the nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium and that can thereby provide light for the eyes of my people and warmth for their comfort.”

Perhaps the long-accepted Biblical translation was simply an abbreviation of the Lord’s pronouncement given that 20 centuries before Guttenberg, they were chiseling scriptures into clay and “Let there be light” pretty much covered what needed to be said at the time.

But the discovery of the entire text shocked – SHOCKED! – some Biblical scholars of the mid-fifties.  Many were loath to admit that the Bible might have an inaccuracy. Others argued that making this change to the text of the most widely read book in the history of mankind would disrupt the pagination for the next several thousand pages.  Thus, the finding was suppressed.

But a trio of precocious and curious Junior High boys named Calvin Fuller, Gerald Pearson and Daryl Chapin, somehow got wind of this new ancient wisdom.  They coupled this information with their recollection from the previous summer when they were left in a shadeless parking lot in the backseat of one of their mom’s cars – ironically, a ’56 Oldsmobile Starfire – while the mom shopped at a Sears store for some new capris and rubber zorries – what we now call flip-flops. (You can look all this up.)

For their Eighth-Grade science fair project, the three created the first solar voltaic cell which was able to capture energy from the sun to turn a small windmill.  Amazing though this was, their project came in second to a model of a volcano that simulated eruption when lemon juice was poured onto a pile of baking soda.

But the solar industry was thus born and now – regardless of all of the balderdash written above – some fifty-five years later, we want to be a part of this non-polluting, renewable energy revolution.

© 2018

Church of the Open Road Press