The Heavens Declare — Part 5

Note: I debated about not posting this next part of this series today in light of the massacre in Colorado last night. But, as I reflected on it I thought that it is at times like these—at least for me, and maybe for others—that I actually need to be reminded of (and grounded in) how big God is. When the pain and horror and fear and evil that so many in the world are facing every day is brought more forcibly to our attention and closer to home—and when we face times of uncertainty, loss, and fear—it is then we most need to be reminded that God's love for us and our eternal life with Him as Christians is secure and bigger than the world's reach. It is at times like this that we must be reminded that God has defeated death and that nothing that happens to the body of a Christian can remove His eternal life. It is at times like this that we must be reminded that there is a hope for all men and women, and it resides in a God who spans the universe and who is not defeated by the presence of evil. It is at times like this that we must remember that God watched His Son die on the cross at the hands of evil and men, and He acutely knows the pain of loss and of watching loved ones suffer. If I misjudged and shouldn't have posted today, please forgive me. I was not trying to be insensitive.

Our Universe
There are an estimated hundreds of billions of GALAXIES (not just stars!) in the universe. One supercomputer estimates there might be 500 billion galaxies out there (all  diverse and unique)! The NASA web site says “Hubble observed a tiny patch of sky (one-tenth the diameter of the moon) . . . and found approximately 10,000 galaxies, of all sizes, shapes, and colors. From the ground, we see very little in this spot . . .” A large cD galaxy can be 10 times brighter than the Milky Way, and can have a diameter of 6 million light-years across—60 times larger than the Milky Way! (Remember from an earlier post that if our solar system was the size of a quarter the Milky Way would go from the east to west coast of the United States? Well, if I did the math right, a galaxy like this would wrap around the Earth about seven times using this same scale!)  IC 1101, the biggest galaxy we’ve found as of 2009, and is thought to have 100 trillion stars in it alone, and some astronomers are estimating there might be 300 sextillion stars in our universe (that’s a 3 with 23 zeroes after it)! Honestly, the numbers just keep getting bigger the better our telescopes get, which makes sense to me because since the Heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork, and God’s glory knows no end, it makes sense the heavens wouldn’t either! Astronomers don’t even know if our universe is finite (has an edge) or infinite, or if there are other universes, but one estimate puts our universe at 150 billion light-years in diameter—that’s 186,000 miles per second for 150 billion years to cross it!

God Thought #1: Hebrews 11:3 declares unequivocally that, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” By faith . . . not having seen it happen, we believe that God spoke and all the universe was. By faith, in times like these, we trust in His goodness, His power, His love, and His victory, though we don't always see it manifest around us—and at times it seems to be mocked by the world's circumstances. We also take heart that He did not require anything physical to make the universe from. His Word was all that was required. That means we don't need to see the physical building blocks for a solution to the problems we face. God can bring solutions forth from nothing!

God Thought #2: Psalm 8:3-4 says, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” The stars remind us how big God is, and the Bible reminds us He is mindful of each of us even with the universe measured by the spans of His hand. Even when it doesn't feel like it He is mindful of each of us, and there is great comfort in that!

Thank you, Lord, for your love shown on the cross and your power over darkness shown in the empty tomb. Thank you that you are far bigger than this world and Creation itself, and yet you love us and are mindful of us. Please comfort the hurting, heal the wounded, and turn hearts towards You and the gift of Your Son, Jesus, on the cross.

Viewpoint is Everything . . .

How many GALAXIES can you count?

If any of you have known me, or followed my blog, any length of time, you know that I often turn to space and the stars as the place in which I put things back in proper perspective and remind myself how big and utterly amazing God is. Sometimes just stepping outside and staring up and reflecting for a few moments can bring a peace and restoration to my thoughts and anxieties that have gotten out of order and balance. But, that isn't the case for everyone, and I had a real lesson in how much viewpoint matters the other day . . .

Recently, with all the hype about the star Betelgeuse and whether it was dying next year or not, I spent a little time looking at more facts about it on the internet, and locating it in the night sky. What I learned was amazing (it is in the constellation Orion, by the way, and easy to see from our area at night). While one of the bigger stars, it is far from the biggest star, and yet, according to one video, if you were to take that tiny star and put its center where our sun is, its edges would go 90% of the way to Saturn's orbit! Picture that—this star, if it was put in the place of our sun, would have, inside of it, all the planets between the sun and Saturn—which means that Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and the largest of our planets, Jupiter, would all be inside it . . . along with all the space inbetween them! And it's not the largest star!

According to one video, if a plane flew around the largest known star at 900 km/h (which I believe is 560 mph) it would take it 1,100 years to get around it once! And these are just a couple of stars in our single Milky Way galaxy. To put that in perspective, according to Wikipedia, the Milky Way galaxy alone has 100–400 billion STARS in it, and is 100,000 light years across! That means that, if you traveled at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second—or 700 million miles per hour—a speed that would take you around the earth over seven times in a second) it would take you 100,000 years to cross our galaxy alone . . . and there are billions of galaxies in our universe!

Now, here's where viewpoint matters. The impact that these figures had on the people making the videos I watched, and many of the people commenting on them on YouTube, was to make them feel completely insignificant. One video ended with flashing the words, "You are not the center of the universe!" Another had a quote by Carl Sagan in which he said, "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

Some of the comments posted on these videos included (using their syntax/grammar):

Look? how small & insignificant we are. LOOK how small! We probably (possibly) the most insignificant thing in the galaxy. We are SMALL!!

i agree 100% that most people(including my wife) dont realize how lucky we are to be here.most people could care less about the universe and the planet we live on.what are the odds of there being a planet with the ingredients for life which orbits a sun in the? exact spot to form life with intelligence to figure out how lucky we really are??

"Luck . . . insignificant . . . forgotten corner . . . lost in a galaxy . . ." this is the perspective and viewpoint one gets by looking at these stars, galaxies, and facts without a knowledge of the love of God who made them, and the story of the cross. I, on the other hand, find myself drawn to completely opposite conclusions when I stare at the sky and ponder these same facts that these other people have. For example, the other night at our fire department drill, I stared up and saw Betelgeuse up there and I pictured the graphic I had seen of that single star swallowing our solar system out to almost Saturn, and I felt such a huge sense of how huge my God is, and I thought, "Why do I ever worry about anything when my God who loves me is so big!" Such peace and security flooded me after that.

I look up at these stars, and ponder the size of the universe, and then I realize that the God who made all of that crowned it with the creation of man, in His image. I read in the Word that before He ever formed the earth He had His plan in place to adopt me through His Son's death. I realize that, of this vast universe, He chose to come to our planet to die, to redeem us for His own, to live with us in eternity, and that, with this vast universe, He knows the number of hairs on my head and my every thought and He loves me and calls me His own. For me, the size of the stars and the universe doesn't make me feel insignificant—rather, I find that the more I realize that the God who made all of that knows me intimately and loves me so much that He died for me makes me realize that I am of great worth to the One whose estimate matters most.

I think the difference is that for those who don't know Him and His love they start from here and look farther and farther out and just feel smaller and more lost and more insignificant. I look at the same stars, but I start at the farthest point and I realize that the Father's eyes move from them closer and closer to us, here, who He has loved and made in His image and died for on a cross to have a relationship with of fellowship, love, adoption as His children, and eternal life with Him. When I see it that way I realize that we are, in fact, the center of the universe—because we are the center of His love and eye, and He is all that matters. Yes, the universe displays the glory of God . . . but we, as Christians, carry it . . . He dwells in us and calls us His own. Yes, viewpoint is everything . . .

As High as the Heavens . . .

This collection of five photos from the Hubble Space Telescope is awesome and I wanted to share it with you! (I love just cruising the Hubble site and looking in wonder on what God has created, and I have over a gigabyte of photos from them on my hard drive! I put a link to the Hubble site below.)

The Bible says that the heavens declare the glory of our God and the heavens are, indeed, massive and glorious beyond our ability to fathom or comprehend. I tried to keep this picture small enough to not clog your internet, but large enough for you to see some detail. Try clicking on it to enlarge it and see if that helps. For the image in this post I brought their 5-picture sequence into a draw program and put in the arrows to help it make sense. In a nutshell, in each case the "next" picture in the sequence is an enlargement of the small square in the previous picture. So, if you follow it across and then down, the last picture is probably not even a visible fraction of the first picture! And this is all in just one tiny slice of the sky we could probably cover with our tiniest finger nail! Wow, when Isaiah writes, "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Is 55:9) it really makes us pause and wonder!

Our family has been watching a lot of Creation videos lately and one thing that really comes through in them is just how immense our known universe is. There are billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone, and there are billions of galaxies, each with their own collection of billions of stars . . . and as the heavens are higher than earth (higher than we can even fathom!) so are His ways and thoughts higher than ours! It really gives us some pause for thought. What comfort to know I am trusting my life to a God so huge and wonderful and glorious! (Note: as of 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope people were estimating there were 125 billion galaxies . . . and that was 10 years ago!) I find that if I can keep the size of things like this in perspective in my mind the things in this life that seem really big to me often just shrink as a result.

Enjoy the picture! Let me know if you like this and I can share some more of my favorite Hubble pictures. If you want to cruise the Hubble site (awesome pictures, not so accurate date estimates) the link to a good starting page is: http://www.spacetelescope.org/bin/images.pl?searchtype=bestof . I also have posted quite a few of my favorites on our church web site in the Photo Gallery section in an album called, "The Heavens Declare."

(Also, you may have noticed, I added a few fun widgets to the blog that should be neat to watch as the blog grows. One is a live activity feed which shows where people are visiting from. There is also one that shows the most recent comments. At the bottom of each post a widget now suggests other posts I've done that it senses are similar and that might interest you if that one did, and there is another that shows some of the different tags that I have used for posts. You can click on any of the tags shown and it will show you other posts which have that same tag. Let me know how you like these widgets, I thought they were fun.)