I just came in from our backyard where I was stargazing. Just a few hours earlier the sun illuminated the sky in brilliant blue, providing the backdrop for the palette of fall colors in the millions of leaves. Now the darkness hid all those colors, drawing my attention upward where the view was essentially black and white, but spectacular.

I wish I had known where to look for Eta Carinae, one of the faintest stars in the nighttime sky. I read somewhere that it’s about 150 times bigger than our sun and four million times brighter. The reason that it’s so faint is its great distance from us; it takes a good 10,000 years for its light to get here, and light travels 186,000 miles per second! 10,000 light-years is a long way off.

I don’t have a telescope, but I’ve read news releases from those privileged to gaze through the really big telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope. They’ve observed the Cartwheel Galaxy that’s some 500 million light-years away. It has a hole punched in it from a collision with a smaller galaxy that sent its stellar debris flying outward at 200,000 miles an hour. Talk about a colossal accident!

Gazing up at the canopy of multiple millions of dots of light, many of which are entire galaxies and not single stars, I was in awe. My thoughts moved beyond this astonishing display of creation to the amazing Creator -- to think that He cast it all into existence by mere thought and will!

Earlier in the day I took my old microscope off the mantle over our fireplace and set it up outside on our picnic table. I peered though its eyepiece to a world usually hidden by its smallness. An ant’s head looked as big as a horse’s, and far more scary! Grains of salt had the appearance of crystal boulders. A butterfly wing looked like a roof with shingles of a dozen bright colors. A drop of water from my pond contained algae strands that appeared like green garden hoses left lying about. That same drop of water revealed a single-celled animal that appeared to be a long transparent funnel with hair-like cilia around the large-end opening. The cilia waved rhythmically, sucking in tiny debris it ate.

It was a rare day in which I happened to observe both the microcosm and macrocosm, the tiny and the big, of what God’s made. I marvel at the creation, but I marvel even more at the Creator. He inhabits the farthest galaxy millions of light-years away and also the single-celled creature hidden in the bottom muck of my pond. He is, however, not only in everything and around everything He’s made, He is beyond it all. All of creation is only a small expression of this awesome being called God.

What is truly amazing is that this awesome God wants to be called Father! He made us, the species called human beings, in His own image. He did this so we could delight in knowing Him in a personal way. We hold a unique position in the cosmos, a special place in the Creator’s heart! He even incarnated Himself as one of us in Jesus to bring us back to Him. The earth may not be the center of the universe, as was thought to be the case a few centuries ago, but we humans are certainly the center of His attention! He came to our planet to be among us. We hold far greater interest for Him than the Cartwheel Galaxy. He yearns to consider each of us a holy temple in which He can dwell through the presence of His Holy Spirit. We are part of His eternal and infinite plan that exceeds the space/time boundaries of this existence!

It is a precious life we live. Unlike all the rest of creation, we can choose to reflect a greater glory than the glory of being a part of His creation. We can reflect the glory of His love and care for us by voluntarily responding to Him in love and obedience. I want my life to reflect that glory!

The great composer Johann Sebastian Bach inscribed the musical scores he created with the letters S.D.G., "Soli Deo Gloria," which means "To the glory of God alone." I want to live each of my days in such a way that I can stamp them with the affirmation "Soli Deo Gloria." I want to live to the glory of God alone!

I’ve really enjoyed our exchange of thoughts, questions, fears and hopes. I look forward to more of the same!

A fellow seeker after truth,
Dave