Consider the heavens, the stars. Psalm 8 encourages us to do this as an exercise in perspective. The closest star to us is the sun which is 1,287,000 times bigger than the earth. There are up to 400 billion other stars, like our sun, in our galaxy, and they get much bigger. Red giants like Betelgeuse are about 700 times bigger than our Sun. Anyway, that’s just our galaxy. Our home galaxy, the milky way, is a huge disk, that is up to 160,000 light years across. That means it takes light 160,000 years to get from one end to the other! But that is much smaller than our neighbouring galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy, which is about 2.5 million light years from the milky way. Andromeda contains around a trillion stars and is 220,000 light years across. Well, that’s just two galaxies accounted for. There are, in the universe, around 200 billion more galaxies. So, what does God want us to consider here? What sort of perspective are we meant to gain? God wants us to see two things in combination. First, how infinitely great and powerful he is as the creator of all things, and, secondly, how amazing it is that he would set his affection on us. The repeated refrain of Scripture is, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom”. The fear of the Lord is the awe of God, not from afar, but from up close. It is the combination of intimacy with transcendence. It is the experience of intimacy with a God who is greater than our minds can contain. Does that give you some perspective?
Reflect on the greatness of God and thank him for setting his love on you.
Read Psalm 8
