Occasionally, during the course of my life, I've experienced a few explosions, and not just the ones that occur when you've really upset someone! The photograph above is not from one of those occasions, but I thought it was just a brilliant photo. It's of a supernova which occurred in 2006, and astronomers have suggested that it shows the death of one of the most massive stars that can exist, and it took place 78 million light years away.
When I meditate on these facts it reminds me of the magnitude of God's creation, far vaster than any of us can truly comprehend. In turn, that fact emphasises God's greatness, in that because He loves us so much and was pained by the fact that man had become separated from Him by sin, He gave His only son, Jesus, to die on the cross at Cavalry as a Sacrificial Lamb. When you believe on Jesus Christ and submit your life to God in His name, then you have the only true hope of salvation.
Anyway, back to the story that I planned to write this morning, which details three events in my life where minor explosions have occurred.
The first of these events goes back more years than I really care to remember when, as a young lad of about 12 or 13 growing up in the small Wiltshire town of Corsham, I used to go along to the Cycle Shop which was run by Mr Hobbs and purchase a tin of carbide. He sold these to fuel the carbide lamps that some cycles, I presume, must still have had in use. Carbide came in a narrow tin, about three inches in diameter and about eight or nine inches in length.
We used to dig the tin slightly into the ground at an angle, which served to stabilise and direct it, and then with a very small amount of carbide in the bottom, put a little water in and quickly jam the lid back on. In a few moments the lid would fly through the air as our mini-explosive device demonstrated the power of the carbide/water reaction. Looking back I cannot understand why we were allowed to buy such a dangerous substance! I have subsequently discovered the most horrendous tales of fingers being blown off and far worse, by teenagers doing what we did back then. Nowadays the Elf 'n Safety goblins would quickly place a ban on such matters, and quite rightly too!
The second of my tales goes back to when I was fourteen or fifteen years old and used to earn pocket money by doing gardening jobs for folk in the area. There was a house on the outskirts of Corsham where I used to go and work for Commander Simmonds and his wife on a regular basis. On day, whilst busy in the garden, I heard a series of explosions coming from the direction of the house. I dropped what I was doing and rushed in through the back door. Mrs Simmonds was in the kitchen looking towards the pantry where the remnants of her home-made ginger beer bottles were scattered across the floor in a pool of the liquid.
I've known a few mixtures of ginger beer that were strong enough to 'blow your socks off', as the expression is, but never before or after have I experienced a mixture that fermented so much that it blew the bottles up! I'm not certain, but I suspect that she never made any ginger beer after that!
The final tale, in this saga of minor explosions, goes back to when I lived in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and was down at the Beitbridge border area prior to going across the border into South Africa to do some shopping at Messina. It was an extremely hot day, so hot that it was difficult to get enough air to breathe properly, and even sitting in the shade of a large tree hardly improved the situation. People were trying to buy cold beers and coca-cola from the nearby hotel bar, but the ice machines and refrigerators were of little use in the extreme heat. Every now and then there would be a sharp explosive 'BANG' as a bottle exploded on the shelf in the bar from the heat. Needless to say, living under the constant threat of terrorist attack as we did in those days, the loud bangs did little to settle the nerves of the people on that day!
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