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No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD' because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." This is what the LORD says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar- the LORD Almighty is his name: "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight," declares the LORD, "will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me." (Jeremiah 31:34-36 NLV). Imagine taking a grain of rice and holding it at arm's length. It’s not too big from that point of view. Now go outside this evening and look near the Big Dipper for a spot about the same size as that rice grain you held earlier. Probably you will still not see too much. However,
that same spot in question has intrigued astronomers because it appeared, for
all practical purposes, to be devoid of stars and galaxies. In December 1995,
the $6.9 billion US Hubble Space Telescope was aimed at this presumably empty
patch. Over the next 10 days, Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera, the
WFPC-2, snapped 342 images that later were digitally combined. In the resulting
image, called the Hubble Deep Field, amazed astronomers counted 1,500
discernible galaxies or fragments of galaxies. 1 This
point in the sky, the size of a grain of rice held at arms length, yielded a
mind-boggling 1,500 galaxies or fragments of galaxies and each galaxy contains
thousands of stars (suns) light years apart, just like the Milky Way planet
Earth is in! That little bit of information amazed me. Life can be just like
that grain of rice held an arm’s length away from us. From our vantagepoint
the rice of life may be so small but with a magnifying lens, we could photograph
thousands of problems that are mind-boggling. Problems like stress, loneliness,
isolation, and lack of self-esteem, chemical or sexual addiction. Even the
barrage of the late-night TV news can discourage us. But
that grain of rice can be the spice of life as well. Hidden beyond the clouds is
an answer that has come to us in the form of Jesus Christ. He came to planet
Earth to give us a new perspective on life. In His great love for us, Jesus died
on the cross for our sins so that we can see the goodness of living, the
sweetness of light and the value of virtue.
So this evening as you look near the Big Dipper, you may not see 1,500
galaxies but you can enjoy the thought that God is still there, filling our
lives with opportunities disguised so often in ordinary clothes. 1.
William Harwood, The Washington Post, Washington
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