Each day I opened my apartment door to a breathtaking close-up of Mount Fuji. Often I’d stand for minutes gazing at it, studying it: the timberline, the crevasses, the snow capped peak, when it wasn’t shrouded in clouds. The volcano towered over the coastal region, the land rising from sea level to over 12,300 feet in less than 40 miles.
From Fujinomiya where I lived, the mountain stood about 22 miles away, but it appeared to be “in the backyard,” affirming to me the scale of colossal things. Our Sun is 93 million miles away and still appears as a sizeable disk in the sky. Yet the Sun’s actual diameter is nearly 110 times the Earth’s diameter, like comparing the height of a nickel to a door. Beside it we would see nothing else but it.
A 'Mike' for Christ 