THE UNIVERSE AND GOD
Sightings from the James Watt telescope reveal the vastness of the universe. Scientists want to look back as far as they can and speculate on how it all began. To me, the vastness of the universe is but one evidence of the vastness of God and how it all began by him. And we won’t see him with a telescope, regardless of its power.
Job (36:26, NIV) expressed it like this: “How great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out.”“Who has the wisdom to count the clouds? Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens? (38:37, NIV)
Stars are named by The International Astronomical Union Astronomers, and you can’t buy a star from NASA. You can, however, buy a Memorial star for a loved one or even a binary star for two people. There is a Star Registration site, and it is legitimate, with no laws prohibiting such activities. However, you cannot own the stars because they cannot be owned as property. (How would you get a star home, and what would you do with it?)
David exclaimed, “He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name” (Psalm 147.4, NIV). He also had this promise; “I will make the descendants of David my servant and the Levites who minister before me as countless as the stars in the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore” (Jeremiah 33:22, NIV). God does not need a star registration service!
And yet in Isaiah 34:4 we read that “All the stars in the sky will be dissolved and the heavens rolled up like a scroll; all the starry host will fall like withered leaves from the vine, like shriveled figs from the fig tree.” At the appointed time, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken” (Matthew 24.29, NIV)’ This echoes Ezekiel 32:7: “When I snuff you out, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon will not give its light.”
God asks Job (37:16) Do you know how God controls the clouds and makes his lightning flash? (NIV). It is a rhetorical question. God of course does all that and in Psalm 104:3 we read that he “lays the beams of his upper chambers on their waters. He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind.” (NIV)
Does all of this just happen, given time and chance, or is God the creator responsible? Yes, “He covers the heavens with clouds, provides rain for the earth, and makes the grass grow in mountain pastures.” (Psalm 147:8 NIV). “Listen, O heavens, and I will speak! Hear, O earth, the words that I say!” (Deuteronomy 332.1 NLT). God is interactive with the universe he created.
We read in 1 Chronicles 29:11: “Yours, Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the majesty and the splendor, for everything in heaven and earth is yours. Yours, Lord, is the kingdom; you are exalted as head over all” (NIV).
From heaven the Lord looks down and sees all mankind; (Psalm 33:13, NIV). This is because the heavens and earth are his, as well as all that is in the world (Psalm 89.11). God laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are also the work of his hands (Psalm 102.25). He has given the earth us, but the heavens belong to him (Psalm 115,16).
We cannot comprehend the extent of his creation, for “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?” (Isaiah 40.12, NIV.)
In awe, we should lift our eyes to heaven and ask: “Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing” (Isaiah 40:26, NIV). For God “sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in” (Isaiah 40:22NIV)
When I read “I clothe the heavens with darkness and make sackcloth its covering” (Isaiah 50:3, NIV), I am reminded of that wonderful last verse of The Love of God: “Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made; were ev'ry stalk on earth a quill, and ev'ryone a scribe by trade; to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry; nor could the scroll contain the whole, though stretched from sky to sky”
The vastness of God: how wonderful, and our understanding of it will always be inadequate.
Karl Franklin
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