Hubble

 December 2, 2021

The Hubble telescope is 30 years old. Yesterday I watched a video of some of the images of deep space it has taken showing stars that turned out to be galaxies, clusters of galaxies millions of light years distant, each galaxy containing millions if not billions of stars. In echoes of God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis15:5, the commentator noted that there are more atoms in a single grain of sand than there are stars in the universe.

Psalm 8:3-4 is more poignant than ever before. “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars which you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man, that you visit him?”

If anything could make me doubt my faith it would be this question. I have no trouble believing that God is greater than all Hubble has revealed, or that he created it all. The magnitude of the majesty of God I can understand. The real challenge to my faith is that with a universe far more vast than Abraham could have imagined, that God would be interested in, let alone send his Son to die for me. In the unimaginable vastness of the universe, a God who sees this little speck called earth, and loves those little specks living on it is almost unbelievable. “Amazing love, how can it be, that thou my God shouldst die for me!”