Today’s Scripture Reading (April 2,
2016): Psalm 8
The stars
are not numberless, no matter what our poets might try to tell us. That is
probably not a surprise to anyone, I mean everything has a number and a limit.
But how few stars you can see, even far from the city lights and with no moon
in the sky, might surprise you. If you have good eyesight, on a dark night you
can probably make out about 2,000 to 2,500 stars. Still, that is a lot of stars
and even that number would be extremely hard to count, even on a perfect night.
And every single star that we can make out is brighter than our own Sun. So the
next time someone comments that there are a million stars in the sky, you have
two choices with regard to how you respond. You can either tell the person you
are talking to that they are in error, or you can just recognize the soul of
the poet within.
That is not
to say that there aren’t billions of stars up there; just that most of them are
too far away or too dim for us to make out. Of course, the universe is made up
of more than just stars, whether we can see them or not. It contains dark
matter, planets, rocks, asteroids, comets, and a lot of dust, just to mention a
few of the things that are hurtling over our head. Our universe is truly wondrously
made. So it amazes me a little when people, often Christians, try to whittle
down this masterpiece of God into something that is maybe easier to understand.
I spoke with one Christian not long ago that minimized the size of the universe
that we can see (if you are wondering how far that might be, it is 20 quadrillion
or 20,000,000,000,000,000 miles.) It seemed that he was uncomfortable with the
story that a universe that size might tell. Oh, and,
by the way, the universe is much larger, most of it simply lies beyond
what we can see.
David, on
the other hand, seemed very comfortable with the universe that he could look up
at. To him, it was simply proof of the power contained in the fingers of the
God that he served. However, David also didn’t seem to be belittled by the size
of what he saw. The truth, as far as David was concerned, was that even though
God had created everything that he could see, he was still concerned about
David. He loved David and the rest of mankind.
It might be
tempting to believe that this is just an example of the typical egocentric
thinking of mankind, but the reality is that we have the proof of God’s love
for us. God gave his Son not to save the length and breadth of the universe,
but rather to save us from the sin that we so easily commit. And to ignore a
God like that would be a tragedy beyond anything that our best poets could
possibly imagine.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 9
& 10
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