Space and Sin

 August 2, 2022

Inflation is up at least 9%, crime of all sorts is increasing, trust in our government, media, and public educational system is plummeting, and all this is just on the domestic scene. The war in Ukraine, China’s saber-rattling, Iran’s threats of nuclear war, and the continuing Palestinian-Israeli conflict; add it all up, and there is evil and trouble everywhere you look. We look for the good, but it always seem overwhelmed by the evil all around us.

Our Bible tells us that when God was creating the world, he regularly pronounced his blessing over it: “God saw that it was good.” Sometime later, sin entered, and all this goodness became twisted, distorted, perverted. But the creation is still good. The prophets saw something most of us miss; they were somehow able to look beyond the destruction, bloodshed, the lies and deception that was all around them to see the hand of God. It helps to expand our perspective, to get a wider view of all God is doing.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been getting photos on my newsfeed from the James Webb telescope, NASA’s newest venture that is quickly outpacing Hubble, which has served us for the past 35 years. The pictures are—to put it mildly—spectacular! We are seeing further and clearer into the expanse and magnificence of the universe that exceeds our imaginations; galaxies so distant and large that we have to invent numbers and concepts to even express its vastness.

And here we sit on earth, a minuscule speck in a small solar system in a mid-sized galaxy, so insignificant as to be almost nonexistent, both in time and space. When I consider the glorious and majestic power, the greatness of God’s love and the magnitude of the universe he created, all the sin in the world is pretty small compared to the glory of God’s handiwork. And our Gospel tells us that God invaded both time and space in this tiny place called Earth in the person and work of Jesus Christ because our sins were so heinous and destructive only a miracle could save us. The miracle is that he looked through the vast corridors of the universe, saw us, and considered us who are less than nothing worth the sacrifice of his Son for our salvation.