Closer Than You Think

June 16, 2008

By Christina Quick

As a person who loves to camp and spend time outdoors, I’ve always been a fan of the night sky. So when I had a chance recently to visit a university observatory during an open house, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to look through one of the massive telescopes used by scientists who study the stars.

Since astronomers prefer to stay as far as possible from the intrusion of city lights, getting to the viewing lab was no small task. After several wrong turns and what seemed like an endless journey over crater-filled dirt roads, the kids and I, along with a friend and her two children, arrived at the spot in the woods where several dozen astrophysics students, professors and interested members of the public had gathered. It was a chilly evening, and a low canopy of thick clouds hung overhead. People huddled outside the dome-covered building, gazing upward and silently hoping for the sky to clear.

At last the clouds began to part, and the telescope rotated into position. Everyone lined up for a chance to look. When my turn came, I stared through the lens in awe. There was Saturn glowing like molten gold in a vast sea of blackness. Its shimmering rings and three of its moons were clearly visible.

“It’s a billion miles away,” a professor explained to my children.

“Wow,” they whispered, their eyes shining with wonder in the faint light.

We later viewed Mars and saw time-lapse images of M51, a galaxy millions of light years away. Confronted with the staggering immensity of the universe, I thought of Isaiah 40:12: “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket, or weighed the mountains on the scales and the hills in a balance?” (NIV)

We have a big Creator, a powerful and magnificent God. Yet He is not a billion miles away. In that same passage, we are told of God’s nearness: “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young” (Isaiah 40:11).

I like that verse. It reminds me of God’s concern for children and families and for the billions of individual people — each anonymous life —inhabiting this small planet as it spins in an endless expanse of space.

Even as our senses strive to penetrate the mysteries that surround us, God’s eyes are ceaselessly fixed on us. Though doubt and the distractions of living sometimes cloud our view, His truth and goodness are revealed in His creation and in His Word. The God who measured the heavens with His hand reaches down to touch our lives.

“Wow,” my children would say.

Yes. Wow.

— Christina Quick is staff writer for Today’s Pentecostal Evangel and blogs at Refrigerator Art (cquick.agblogger.org).