I love to walk early and pray, especially under a clear dark sky. This week, it made me think about my friend Floyd’s T-shirt of the Milky Way, complete with Google Maps-style location icon indicating, “You Are Here.” It marks our place in a galaxy that’s 100,000 light years across and just one of potentially 2 trillion other galaxies. Unimaginably vast spaces created seemingly for God’s own pleasure and glory. I suddenly felt very small.

I love JFK’s speech in 1962 where he declared that America would choose to go to the moon knowing that it would be a huge undertaking. I think now of how much effort is going into establishing a permanent home for humanity on Mars. Journeys that are so incredibly far for us but a mere speck of dust in the grand scheme of things. I imagine these amazing feats as our own generation’s version of Babel that give us a sense of achievement and self-sufficiency. Yet, like Babel, I imagine God descending to have a look from his 2 trillion galaxy perspective and maybe not finding it so impressive.

I write this not because I have a problem with space travel. I actually love that God has blessed us with a predictable environment for us to test, explore and harness. I simply want us to stand back and make sure that we are not the measure of all things.

As I stand and look at the stars it does two things for me. One is that faith begins to rise up. I think of the impossibilities that face us in reaching out to people and planting new locations. The stars remind me that there is nothing God cannot do. I think of the physical, mental and relational problems in our own church and in our city. The stars remind me that the one who spoke the universe into being just needs to speak a word.

The second thought takes me to Psalm 8 where David couldn’t quite believe that humanity could be remotely significant to God in light of the vast expanses of space. And yet he wrote:

“You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour” (Psalm 8:5).

The truth is that as small as we may be, we are the only living creatures across 2 trillion galaxies deliberately created as a reflection and representative of God. You are hugely significant not based on size but on who created you and why. I pray that like me, your identity would be strengthened and your faith would rise as you stare at the stars this week.

Simon

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