Art Reflection for Advent: Week 4

Welcome to the last Advent art post! The fourth stanza of “As With Gladness, Men of Old” goes like this:

Holy Jesus, every day
Keep us in the narrow way;
And, when earthly things are past,
Bring our ransomed souls at last
Where they need no star to guide,
Where no clouds Thy glory hide.

This verse made me wonder: If Jesus will be so bright a star is no longer needed, then how bright does He have to be? Of course, this automatically means research (go with it, I’m nerdy).

A star’s brightness, or how much energy it produces, is called its luminosity. We measure other stars’ luminosity based upon our own sun, which produces 3.846×10²⁶ watts or 1.00 solar luminosity.

Want a context for this number? Solar flares can produce as much energy as a billion 1-megaton bombs, which, according to Mr. Wiki, is only 1/6th of the total energy produced by the sun each second.

Speaking on a purely literal, physical, and nerdy level–that’s a lot of energy Jesus has to emit if He wants to outshine the sun.

Related articles

• Art Reflection for Advent: Week 3 (abbyjreed.com)
• Art Reflection for Advent: Week 2 (abbyjreed.com)
• Artwork Reflection for Advent: Week 1 (abbyjreed.com)