Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen. – Psalm 41:13

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 10, 2016): Psalm 41

GN-z11 is a galaxy that is found within the constellation Ursa Major (don’t bother trying to look for it, you would need a telescope to actually see it.) What is significant about GN-z11 is that it is the furthest object from our Earth of which we are aware. GN-z11 is about 32 billion light years from earth. Other significant things we know about GN-z11 is that it is twenty-five times smaller than our Galaxy, the Milky Way. It contains 1% of the mass of the Milky Way, and yet it is creating stars twenty times the rate of the Milky Way.

We suspect that there are objects that are even farther away whose light has not and most likely will never reach our planet, but we know that GN-z11 stands on the edge of the part of the universe that we can see. But my mind seems to want to push beyond GN-z11. It questions what is on the other side. What fascinates me is that my mind can’t seem to fathom two opposite realities. First, I don’t seem to have the ability to understand the end of things like the universe. I know that the universe, as we understand it, has an end. That there is a point in this ever-expanding, empty, star generating, space that we inhabit where there is a border that cannot be crossed. But my mind seems to want to push the limits to what is on the other side. I can’t fathom something that is less than nothing (after all, even nothing is something, it is empty space that can be filled.) According to science, on the other side of our universe is what can only be described as uncreated space. Our universe is rapidly expanding into that space, creating something where before there was less than nothing. And that seems to be a hard for me to understand.

But what seems to be as equally hard to understand is the idea that there is no beginning or end. After all, everything I know has boundaries. Everything has a beginning and an end. How am I to understand everlasting to everlasting? I think that ancient rabbi’s struggled with the same questions that I wrestle with when it came to the idea of everlasting. Their solution was to decide that God did not become God until the onset of creation. Before “God created the heavens and the Earth,” God existed, but he was not God. And to ponder what God was before creation was considered to be a sin. The idea essentially set up a barrier at the beginning. The end, well, we don’t think about that. Science has told us that one day this universe will stop expanding and start to contract. That created space will once again become uncreated space. The process will continue until all that is, is once again contained within a cosmic filament. Then the process will begin one more time with another galactic Big Bang. And of this process, there is no end – everlasting just like the one who created it in the first place.

Of course, while God is from everlasting to everlasting, our focus is always on the present. God is everlasting, we are not. And our only real job is to consider the difference that we can make in the time bound spot that we know of as today.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm 55