I've had the privilege to take many different interesting classes over the course of my few years on this earth. One class that stands out in my mind the most, though, is one that I took my junior year of college. I'd always LOVED astronomy, so I decided to combine my photographic pursuits with this love and take an Astrophotography course.
I don't know why I never thought of this while I was taking the class itself, but looking at this image that I took a few nights ago reminds me of a passage we read in Genesis 15:5 where God takes Abram outside and speaks these words:
"Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them." And He said to him, "So shall your descendants be."
I wonder what Abram was thinking when he looked up. Because of "light pollution" most of us can't see anything like the picture above. But have you, on a clear night, ever tried to count the stars? Even the stars we can see boggle our mathematical senses, much less the stars that may be just beyond the cusp of what our eyes are capable of. Technology allows us to see even further into space, and only continues to boggle the mind. Examine this from the European Space Agency's Website:
"For the Universe, the galaxies are our small representative volumes, and there are something like 1011 to 1012 stars in our galaxy, and there are perhaps something like 1011 or 1012 galaxies.
With this simple calculation you get something like 1022 to 1024 stars in the Universe. This is only a rough number, as obviously not all galaxies are the same, just like on a beach the depth of sand will not be the same in different places.
No one would try to count stars individually, instead we measure integrated quantitites like the number and luminosity of galaxies."
How much deeper does that promise become the more we know! We find the answer to what Abraham was thinking when he looked up at the sky in reading the next verse:
"And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness." – Genesis 15:6, NKJV
What must it take for us to realize how powerful and mighty the God of Heaven is? Here was a man who thought that he was in a situation where he would have no heir through his wife and God makes him a promise which leads to more heirs than he could ever imagine. Oh how great our God is! We see the fulfillment of this promise stated by the Hebrew writer in Hebrews 11:12, in the midst of the "Hall of Fame of the Faithful":
"Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude—innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore."
Of course the product of that promise is of benefit to us today. May we never discount the depth and the meaning of God's Word and his promises to us!
"And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Galatians 3:29, NKJV
Sources
European Space Agency - http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM75BS1VED_index_0.html
Very thought provoking, Daniel. I liked your subtle but important statement that, "Here was a man who thought that he was in a situation where he would have no heir through his wife. . . ."That's right, God's promise was to and with the wife Abram had and to no one else. Isaac was that promised seed, and on through his seed. Muslims are beginning to admit this, instead of Ishmeal being the promised son, and no one has ever claimed anything out of Abraham's six other sons through Keturah. But one of those sons, Midian, had an entire country named after him and gave Moses his father-in-law, Jethro, about forty years before Moses took the children of Jacob out of Egypt. All fascinating stuff as to how big those stars of heaven have grown to be. And yet through it all, Abraham's seed gave us the relatively small nation through whom all the people of the earth are blessed. Praise God. Don Wood
ReplyDeleteAnother thought that hit me was that ancient men counted them and thought there were about 3,000. Ha! I wonder how wrong we might be about 10 to the 24th power? AND the way I read the scriptures, God is still making new ones! :-)Don Wood
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