15-5

Light Flies

Light does fly. It flies at 186,000 miles per second. Snap your finger one time. Light just traveled around the globe seven times! Astrophysicists have discovered what is the farthest known object from earth that is 13 billion light years away! A lightyear is the distance light travels in a year, and it travels 186,000 miles per second, so a lightyear is 5.88 trillion miles! Wow. I thought driving to Kentucky was far. To put that in perspective. It is about 3,000 miles from Atlanta to LA. We live on a tiny planet that orbits our sun, which is 25,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way. And just like our planets orbit the sun, our sun orbits the center of the Milky Way, but it will take it 250 million earth years to complete one rotation! To sum it up, "We have no idea just how big the universe is, but it's so big we have to use a ruler that's 5.88 trillion miles long to measure stuff. The ruler is called a light year."

That may seem a little overwhelming, but all of that is just a speck to God. Scripture says, "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of His mouth. He spoke, and it came to be; He commanded, and it stood firm. God is the one who makes light fly. He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers (to Him). He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in. 'To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?' says the Holy One. Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing."

"God is constant. He blinks and a lifetime comes and goes. To Him one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. All of human history could be written on His fingernail, with plenty of room left over for more. And God is doing well today, thanks you. He has no dilemmas. No quandaries. No counselors. No shortages. No rivals. No fears. No cracks. No worries. He is self-existent, self-contained, self-perpetuated, self-powered, and self-aware. In other words, He's God and He knows it."

Us on the other hand..."You and I are tiny. Miniscule. Transient. Microscopic. A momentary and infinitesimal blip on the timeline of the universe. A seemingly undetectable alliance of dust particles held together by the breath of God. If this fact makes you just a tad bit uncomfortable, you're not alone. Invariably, when I talk about the vastness of God and the cosmos, someone will say, 'You're making me feel bad about myself and making me feel really, really small,' as if that's the worst thing that could happen. But the point is not to make you FEEL small, rather to help you see and embrace the reality that you ARE small. Really, really small."

But the great thing is that though we are just dust particles held together by the breath of God, we are loved by the God of all Creation! So we can say proudly, "I am not, but He knows my name. I am not, but He has pursued me in His love. I am not, but I have been purchased and redeemed. I am not, but I have been invited into The Story, I am not, but I know the Creator of the universe. I am not, but I know I AM!" We are small, but we are on a first name basis with I AM! We are galactic nobody's...99.99% of people on the planet have never heard of us, but God knows everything about us.

So I can live with that shrinking feeling. Because at the end of the day, the only One who really matters, the great I AM, knows me and loves me! That is awesome.

Enjoy the Journey