The Heavens Declare The Glory Of God
As David kept his father’s sheep, he probably had a lot of time to look at the night sky. He wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God” Psalm 19:1. Note some interesting facts that modern technology reveals to us about the heavens. A “galaxy” is a group of heavenly bodies, made up primarily of stars. We are in the Milky Way galaxy which contains 50-100 billion stars. With the naked eye we can see only about 6,000 stars.
The Hubble took pictures of the heavens – 1/25 of one degree and found 1,500 to 2,000 galaxies which means in the heavens there are something like 50-100 billion galaxies. (Illustration: The ratio of what Hubble took a picture of would be equivalent to holding a grain of sand at arm’s length. (Denver Post 1-16-96).
Note the size of our sun and galaxy: Our sun is about 684,000 miles in diameter. (The earth is 8,000 miles in diameter). Some stars are 600,000 times brighter than our sun. It is estimated that the diameter of one star is 336,960,000 miles. It would hold a half billion earths.
Here is an illustration: Put a dot on the board which represents the earth and one inch away put another dot that represents our sun which is 93 million miles from the earth. If we put another dot to represent the next nearest star, we would have to put it four and a half miles away. If we were to put a dot to represent the middle of our galaxy, we would have to put it 25,000 miles away with every inch representing 93 million miles.
The Andromeda galaxy is the closest galaxy to the Milky Way. It is 4.5 billion light years away from earth – a light year is the distance light will travel in a year at the rate of 186,000 miles per second – that is over 65 million mph. This galaxy can be seen with the naked eye. It contains 14 trillion stars. Many other stars are many more light years away from us. It is estimated that from border to border our universe is 20 billion light years across (the distance that light travels in a year at the rate of 186,000 miles a second).
Think about the Care God Has Manifested in Creating the Universe.
Scholars tell us that our galaxy is just the right size. If it were larger the infusion of gases would cause our world to ignite; if it were too small, it would be insufficient to sustain life. We have just the perfect elliptical path around the sun. Our orbit around the sun is not a perfect circle, but an elliptical orbit. For each 18 miles the earth travels it moves one-ninth of an inch off of a straight line. If this was changed to one-eighth of an inch we would burn up. If this was changed to one-tenth of an inch we would freeze to death. We also have just the right mixture of air to breath – if the mixture was changed, we could not survive on this earth.
Think about How the Universe Works Together
Earth is spinning on its axis at the rate of 1,000 mph. While at the same time our earth is orbiting around the sun at 72,000 mph. At the same time our solar system is moving in an orbit, while our galaxy is moving at the rate of 600,000 mph. It is no wonder that Sir James Jeans, a leading British astronomer said that the ultimate reality of the universe is probably forever beyond comprehension by the human mind.
The Lesson We Need to Learn
As we see all this mind-boggling information it ought to cause us to ponder the question David asked in another Psalm: “What is man that you take thought of him” Psalm 8:4.We are such a small speck in all this universe, why does God even think about us? The answer, which again should boggle our mind, is God wants to have fellowship with us. He has made all the provisions for that to happen. Do you want His fellowship as much as He wants your fellowship?