What comes to mind when you think about God? His love? His mercy? His forgiveness? Or maybe His wrath? His justice? His power? When I asked myself that question, the first thing that came to my mind was His vastness. How big He is. Just how vast is God? How big is He?
To get a bit of an idea of how big God really is, let us consider the stars. The nearest star to planet earth, other than the Sun, is Proxima Centauri. This star is roughly 4.3 light-years away from the Sun. That may sound a bit confusing. A light-year is not a measure of time, but rather a measure of distance. A light-year is essentially the distance that light can travel in a year. Light travels at roughly 186,000 miles per second. At this speed, light can travel around the world seven times in one second, and it can travel over 5.87 x 10^12 (that's 587 with 10 zeros behind it) miles in one year. That's really fast! But even at that speed, it still takes light over four years to reach Proxima Centauri from the Sun. But that's just the distance to the nearest star.
The milky way galaxy is estimated to contain nearly 400 billion stars. The milky way galaxy itself is an estimated 100,000 light-years in diameter and 1000 light-years in depth. So that's incredibly large! It is hard to comprehend something that is that big in size. But that's just our galaxy.
The nearest galaxy to ours, Andromeda, is approximately 2 million light years or 1.17 x 10^19 miles (that's 117 with 17 zeros behind it) away. That distance in and of itself is staggering. But that's only one galaxy. There are an estimated hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe presently and as technology continues to improve, even more will become visible. In 2004, the Hubble space telescope took an image of galaxies that are 13 billion light years away. Mind blown yet? Mine sure is.
But you want to know what is even more amazing? God created it all. Not only did He create it all; He spoke it all into being. Not only did He speak it all in to being; He determined how many stars there would be. Not only did he determine how many stars there would be; He calls them all by name. Let me say that again. He knows the name of every star in the entire universe. How can such a God be comprehended? How can anyone dare to gasp at the depth of His knowledge? How can anyone fathom the breadth of His power? God is vast. Everything about Him is vast.
As you look at the stars tonight, know that the same God who created the universe created you. Know that the same God who counts the stars in the sky has counted the very hairs on your head. Know that the same God who knows all of the stars in the universe by name knows your name. Know that you serve a vast and limitless God.
References:
Atkinson, N. (August 3, 2009). How many galaxies have we discovered?
Retrieved from,
http://www.universetoday.com/36610/how-many-galaxies-have-we-discovered/
Christian, E., Safi-Harb, S. (March 17, 1998). Size of the Milky Way.
Retrieved from,
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980317b.html
Li, S. (1999). Distance to the nearest galaxy. Retrieved from http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/SaraLi.shtml.
Tam, K. (1996). Distance to the nearest star. Retrieved from, http://hypertextbook.com/facts/KathrynTam.shtml
Wethingtion, N. (December 16, 2008). How many stars are in the milky way? Retrieved from, http://www.universetoday.com/22380/how-many-stars-are-in-the-milky-way/
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