Monday, June 17, 2019

The Wonders of Heaven


                                                                                                                                    Image result for stars in the heavens
Aloha Dearest Family,

             In Psalm 8, David asks some important questions that we have asked at times in our lives as well,
"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou host ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest (cares for) him?” (Psalm 8:3 and 4)
When gazing up at the stars and the moon at night, David pondered why God even considers us at all. When I visited the Grand Canyon several years ago, I was able to really view the night sky above the canyon and all I could do was stand in awe of what God had created. I can easily see how David could have written these verses. But let us consider the following as well.

In September of 1977 NASA sent out an unmanned space craft to the far reaches of our solar system called the Voyager I. About 33 years from it's launch date, the Voyager I has traveled 10 billion miles (about 15 light years from the sun). At the speed the Voyager I is traveling, it would take 2 billion years to travel the length of our galaxy. It would take 50 billion years to reach the galaxy next to ours. Astronomers have now calculated that there are between 100 billion to 500 billion galaxies that are observable by our most powerful telescopes, not to mention the billions and billions of stars in each galaxy. These numbers are absolutely staggering! And these are just the ones that we can see!! Scientists still do not know what is beyond this. David could never have imagined the true vastness of the universe and yet as we gaze up at the stars above we can also very easily also ask,
"When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou host ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest (cares for) him?"
We don't know how many stars there really are, but we know that God not only knows the number of the stars but he has named them all, (Psalm 147:4)

Psalm 139 is a remarkable Psalm in light of the questions David raised earlier.
"0 Lord, thou host searched me, and known me. Thou knows my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understands my thought afar off. Thou compasses my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, 0 LORD, thou knows it altogether. Thou host beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it."
It is hard to grasp how God Almighty, the creator of the heavens and the earth, would be this concerned for us. As it says further on in this Psalm,
“How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, 0 God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand:..”
This is how much God thinks about us! But why would He? Ephesians chapter 2 has the answer. Even when we were in such a sorry state and in need of mercy, it says,
"But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us (made us alive) together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)” (Ephesians 2:4)
God was rich in the very thing we needed, mercy. Because of His great love wherewith He loved us, He sacrificed His own son so that we could be saved and be reconciled to Himself. I once heard a great definition of the word "sacrifice"; "giving up something you most treasure in order to get something greater." We were that something greater that God so wanted. As much as He loved Jesus, He saw what He could get in return if this sacrifice was made; a true family with sons and daughters that would love Him and who He could love. What a wonderful Father we have!!

                                             Love Always, Ray

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