Pastor’s Corner: “Starry Host”
Psalm 147:4-5 (AMP) – 4 He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by their names. 5 Great is our [majestic and mighty] Lord and abundant in strength; His understanding is inexhaustible [infinite, boundless].
The key point of Psalm 147 is that God is the Creator and is worthy of all praise! The Psalmist wants his readers to absorb God’s greatness by stepping out of their limited perspective and consider God’s heavenly perspective. We can often get bogged down in the problems and struggles of our lives forgetting how big, powerful, awesome, loving and amazing our God is! We contract Christian amnesia and forget that we are surrounded by reminders of God’s greatness all around us in His remarkable creation. One way to realign our perspective to see how big God is and how small our problems are is by looking to the heavenly stars in the night sky. Reflect on this: God numbers the stars in the universe and gives them their names. Let’s put this in perspective. Scientists estimate that there are about 1 x 10 to the power of 22 stars in the visible universe. That would be equivalent to roughly 10,000 stars for each grain of sand on every beach on planet Earth. Let that sink in for a moment………How big is your God?
Psalm 8:3-4 (NIV) – 3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? What should blow your mind is that He cares for so many billions of stars and galaxies and yet, He cares for each one of us. It is almost beyond our comprehension to think that the Creator of the planets and galaxies, cares about our, struggles, suffering, pain and illness. He cares about your family and job security. He cares about the widow across the street who is deciding between buying food, or her medicine. He cares for us so personally that Psalm 139 describes it this way: vs.2: He knows when we sit down and when we rise up – vs.3: He is familiar with all of our ways – vs.4: Before a word is on our tongue He knows it completely – vs. 5: He hems us in–behind and before; and He lays His hand upon us! Think about that – we are completely covered in His love! When we are facing an uncertain future because of an illness we can know He is with us, covering us. All creation, all of the stars, the moon, the birds of the air, the grass of the field . . . all our thoughts and fears, He is familiar with. He knows our thoughts, and He is always covering us.
How can we stay aligned to God’s Heavenly perspective? There is a little town of Green Bank, West Virginia, known as “the quietest town in America.” It is the location of the Green Bank Observatory, the world’s largest steerable radio telescope. This town has removed mobile phones, Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth devices, or microwave ovens. They have done this because the telescope needs “quiet” to “listen” to naturally occurring radio waves emitted by the movement of pulsars and galaxies in deep space. This telescope has a surface area larger than a football field and stands in the center of the National Radio Quiet Zone, a 13,000-square-mile area established to prevent electronic interference to the telescope’s extreme sensitivity. This intentional quiet enables scientists to hear “the music of the stars.”
We also need to intentionally quiet ourselves enough to listen to the One who created the universe so we can receive and know His heavenly perspective. We listen intentionally to God by turning from our distractions to meet Him in Scripture, in prayer and in His beautiful creation. How can you achieve “radio silence” in your life that will know Jesus more? God isn’t distant. He longs for us to make time for Him so He can be the priority of our daily lives and then for eternity. “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth.” (Psalm 8:1)
In His Grace,
Pastor Hamilton