Stars
Psalm 19:1-4
Albert Einstein once said:
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
One of the tragedies of modern man is the loss of mystery. We have grown so accustomed to breakthroughs, discoveries and technology that we have become perpetually unimpressed. Startling new advances barley capture our attention. And why should they when they are announced everyday? Mystery has become something of an endangered animal in our world. And the tragic result is that we have become inoculated against awe and resistant to a sense of wonder.
Think about it. When was the last time you took time to pause in wonder, and stand in rapt awe as you stared into the night sky? I am not talking about just a fleeting glance. I am talking about a long lingering look into the heavens.
For as much as we know and as advanced as we have become, there is still one place where mystery is the rule and not the exception, and that is the sky. But the problem is we hardly ever look up anymore. We scurry around from task to task so preoccupied with the little things in front of us that we never stop to take in the majestic things above us.
How long has it been since you laid in the grass and looked for Orion’s belt or pointed out the big dipper to your children or grandchildren. Taking valuable time to stare at the stars seems wasteful, frivolous, maybe even childish to our overscheduled selves.
But if we don’t stop to ponder and wonder. If we never pause long enough to be overwhelmed with the size and grandure of the universe then Einstein is right… we are as good as dead.
Psalm 19 we read
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
According to Psalm 19 The heavens show us the handiwork of God. The stars are a display of his creativity and his power. The universe is a testimony to his wisdom. If what we see in the sky was made on purpose, then it was made for purpose.
But the past couple of centuries of scientific observation seem to have proven just the opposite.
For thousands of years it was believed that the earth was the center of the universe and that sun and planets and stars revolved around us.
Then in 1530 Nicolas Copernicas, the father of astronomy shocked the world when he declared that the earth revolved around the sun. The catholic church rejected his findings.
Copernican Principle became the…
Principle of Mediocrity
Our location and status are mediocre or unexceptional. Therefore we should not assume that we are privileged or that the Universe was designed with us in mind.
Over the years the Principle of Mediocrity was continuously. Up until the 920’s it was believed that our galaxy, the Milky Way, wasn’t just another galaxy, but the universe itself.
But at the Mount Wilson Observatory Edwin Hubble began photographing patches of indistinguishable light. These fuzzy patches of light were thought to be nothing more than collections of gasses and dust. But Hubble proved that each one was a completely different galaxy, some even larger than our own. And the the universe got much much bigger almost overnight. How big?
This picture was taken with the Hubble space Telescope it shows almost 1500 galaxies. What is remarkable is that the telescope was focused on a speck of sky the size of a dime located 75 feet away. This is a keyhole view of the universe.
In 1991 Voyager 1 turned back toward the sun and snapped this picture. That tiny dot framed by the sunlight is the earth from 4 billion miles away. In 1994 Carl Sagan wrote a book called Pale Blue Dot and in it he uses this photo as a metaphor for our insignificance.
“Because of the reflection of sunlight the earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light as if there were some special significance to this small world. But it is just an accident of geometry and optics. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.” Carl Sagan
According to Sagan and the popular thinking we live on a pale blue dot, that orbits an unremarkable star located in a galaxy that is no different from a million others throughout the universe. The only think the stars tell us were small, insignificant, and purposeless or that _____ Other than that We mediocre and without meaning. And they certainly have nothing to say about God or a Creator
But over the years as we have probed deeper in to the cosmos more discoveries have been made and new information has come to the surface that have caused many to rethink their positions.
Sharon Begley the science editor for The Wall Street Journal says that relationship between religion and science is undergoing a seismic change.
This is how she describes the new discoveries and and the impact they are having:
Astronomers findings-both the new nebulae and novas and the galaxies they spy with their telescopes-are restoring a sense of wonder and even of purpose , in a world at times hostile to both. Instead of leaving less and less room for a Creator who at least once, acted in the world, their findings are acting as an inspiration to and a support for faith.
John Updike writes
“The physicists are getting things down to the nitty gritty, they’ve really just about pared things down to the ultimate details, and the last thing they ever expected to happen is happening. God is showing through….They’ve been scraping away at physical reality all these centuries, and now the layer of the little left we don’t understand is so fine, God’s face is staring right out at us.”
And example of this seismic change can be found in the book The Privileged Planet.
Published in 2004 it was written by astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez and philosopher Jay Richards
In it they describe our planet as privileged because it contain all the factors that are crucial for complex life to exist. In the book they detail each of these factors and explain that each factor is essential. Remove just one one and the earth would become, uninhabitable, incabable of supporting complex life. This as far as science goes is nothing new. But what they did next was..
As they examined the factors they began to see an interesting connection between life an discovery.
Which led them to a very interesting question.
“What if the factors that make a planet inhabitable are the same factors that make it the best place for scientific discovery?”
Do the same factors that allow and sustain our life open then door to study, to observe, to know the source of that life?
In the book they outline 12 convincing examples of this correlation.
One of those connections came to light in 1997 when Guillermo Gonzalez began a study of the earth’s specific location in the galaxy.
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. Which means it is highly flattened, it has a spherical bulge in the center and has spiral arms.
Gonzalez determined that our position in the galaxy is halfway between the center and the outer edge in a region he named the Galactic Habitable Zone. Named so because this region was the most conducive and friendly to life.
The galaxy can be a very dangerous place. He determined that you don’t want to be too close to the center. Because he center of the galaxy is crowded with stars, super nova, various things that would harass life, including a black hole. This lead Gonzalez to concluded that near the center complex life would be virtually impossible.
Too close to the center and we wouldn’t be here.
To close to the outer edge and the earth wouldn’t be here.
Our planet is comprised of Iron, magnesium, silicon and Oxygen. At the edge of the galaxy these planetary building blocks are in short supply to build an earth sized planet
But right in the middle between the center and the edge is the Habitable Zone and that is where we are.
But even with in the zone there are areas that are less hospitable for complex life. We don’t want to be too close to a spiral arm for the same reason you don’t want to be too close to the center.
For life to exist you would need to be in a relatively uncrowded and safe region, and that is exactly where we find ourselves. Right in the habitable zone between the Sagittarius and Persaeus arms of the Milky Way.
You don’t have to be an astrobiologist to see that not only is also a prime location for life, but also observation.
If we were in the center or in a spiral arm the density of star light and cosmic dust would obscure our view so much that it would be impossible to make any real observation. Our views would be so compromised that we wouldn’t be able to determine the structure of our own galaxy, much less the universe.
Gonzalez concluded that our position in the galaxy not only allows for life, but it allows that life to make scientific observations.
What are the three most important things in real estate? Location, location, location.
Is it a coincidence that the place with observers just happens to be the best place to make observation?
The Universe look more like a conspiracy rather than coincidence.
It doesn’t take long to see the ultimate conclusion…
Not only did God give us a place perfectly suited to our needs, but in doing so he provided us with platform by which we could observe and know him.
1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
Those aren’t just twinkling little stars in the sky. They are God communicating with us. They are god mysteriously revealing himself to us.
So what do the stars reveal to us?
1. He is God…
The heavens declare the glory of God
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Glory- describes the awesome and innate essence of God that is to “other” than human experience that it is described as a brilliant light or a consuming fire, which at once awes and threatens to destroy the beholder.
Human language even when it is inspired by the holy spirit will never be able to paint a full and complete picture of God’s glory.
But where language ends the stars begin. The old saying a picture is worth a thousand words. The heavens are a picture of his glory.
Day after day they pour forth speech…
The more we know of science the closer we get to the divine.
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
Robert Jastrow
The next time you turn your gaze upward take some time to stare. Because a quick glance upward isn’t enough time for your brain to understand the what it is seeing. Just when you begin to grasp the majesty and the complexity of what you are looking at remember- it was all spun off of his fingers. This universe you are so impressed with- it is his playground.
The Heavens are a testimony not just to his existence, but to his greatness.
The stars tell us He is God and…
2. We are not…
Isaiah 40:
25 “To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.
26Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one,
and calls them each by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
There is not a day that goes by that we don’t in some way, big or small, try to push God off the throne of our lives. Sin is rooted is in our effort to play God, to usurp his authority, in trying to be his equal.
After Jobs complains against God, God asks Job-
“Can you bind the beautiful Pleiades?
Can you loose the cords of Orion?
Can you bring for the constellations in their seasons or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?”
Job 38:31-33
He is reminding of Job who is in control
Spending some time looking at the stars is healthy for us, because it helps us to keep our lives and our selves in the proper perspective.
The stars tell us that God is bigger then we can ever imagined, and they remind us that we are actually smaller than we remembered.
It is impossible to star at the stars and not be humbled
He is God, we are not, but…
3. We are loved.
Psalm 8
3When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
Scientists like Carl Sagan look it the universe and conclude that we are meaningless, we are insignificant, and we are alone.
But David’s examination of the heavens lead him to another conclusion.
David’s look in to the sky leads him to the same conclusions.
He is God
I am not,
But then he writes:
What is man that you are mindful of him?
Knowing what he knows about God/Himself
He is astonished that God would know him, but not just that God would care for him.
You are God.
I am not, but for some strange reason you love me.
You are mindful of him
Call him to mind, you know him.
Picture is remember someone who is miles away
There is a distance between us and God, a chasm, but that chasm doesn’t get in the way of knowing him but not only does he know it..he cares for him.
the son of man that you care for him?
This is not passive concern. This word is active
The word care- comes form a word that means to hunt, to seek, to long for, to care for. The picture isn’t just that God knows us, but that he longs for us, so he seeks us out so that he can lavish care love upon us.
Little did he know that one day in the future the heavens would again show just how much God far was willing to go to seek us out, to care for us to love, to save us.
We saw his star in the east, and have come to worship him.
Matthew 2:2
