“In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth.” Gen 1:1
The heavens are proclaiming the glory of God, and the expanse declares the work of His hands. Night after night the stars remind us of just how small we are and how huge God is. Looking out into the far reaches of the universe, we find a seemingly infinite expanse of mystery and wonder, intricately fashioned by God of unfathomable size and power.
Just a glimpse at one of the billions of visible galaxies He has formed, resizes us. It shrinks us, and this world we call home, to seeming insignificance in an instant. But, as tiny as we may seem, the God who knows every star by name also knows you. And, in the most stunning rescue imaginable, God sent His Son to this spinning planet we call home. The Creator is reconnecting us to Himself with the life that never ends through Christ and His Sacrifice on the cross. We need only look at God’s universe to discover something of the amazing magnitude of His greatness and His grace.
Something of the grandeur of God is seen in His creation. We read in Ps 33:6: “By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth.”
He made the stars by the breath of His mouth! The nearest star to earth is 93 million miles away – the sun. The earth is a privileged planet with just the right conditions for life. We are exactly the right distance from the sun to benefit from its fierce heat which is 10,000°C on the surface!
The sun is a million times the size of earth. If the earth was the size of a golf ball, the sun would be 15 feet in diameter.
Another star in the galaxy, Betelgeuse, has twice the size of the orbit of the earth around the sun! If the earth was the size of a golf ball, Betelgeuse would be the size of three Empire State buildings on top of one another in diameter.
Yet, there is an even larger star, Mucehpei. If the earth was the size of a golf ball, Mucehpei would be the length of two Golden Gate bridges in diameter! However, not even Mucehpei is the largest star in the galaxy. Canis Majoris is so huge that if the earth was the size of a golf ball, Canis Majoris would be the height of Mount Everest in diameter, in comparison!
God breathed the stars into being. We need to take a glance up into the universe to recognise what a great and majestic, unrivalled and incomparable God we worship.
Sin seeks to shrink God and puff ourselves up. The universe God made shows us what tiny and frail creatures we are. Yet, we are fearfully and wonderfully made, fashioned and formed by the Creator of the universe Himself.
Just consider how each of us is a product of a single cell from our father, and a single cell from our mother, which united to form a completely new and unique individual.
Twenty-three chromosones from the mother and twenty-three chromosones from the father, united to form a unique cell, with a three-billion character description in your DNA. Each cell in your body has its DNA code – encoded in the language of God. If the DNA of one cell was stretched out it would be six feet long. In that DNA there’s so much information that, if it was read out, one character a second, every moment of every day.
It would take 96 years just to read your DNA code in a single cell!
Consider also that, at conception, the single cell of 46 chromosomes then sets out to build the model which now makes up the 75 trillion cells in your body.
There is enough DNA code in your body to go to the moon and back – 178,000 times! And your cells are constantly renewing and replacing themselves. At five months after conception, while still in the womb, a million optic nerve cells are stretched out to match up with their exact partner, out of a million other optic nerve endings, to make possible the miracle of sight. The most technically advanced thing in the world is the eye. At six months, a precision cutting device opened up the skin over your eyes, creating the eyelids, so that you could see.
