This past month, our morning Sunday service we talked about how big God is. We did this by taking a look at the stars, the number of them, and how long it would take to traverse the expanse of our own playground galaxy known as the Milky Way. The Milky Way contains an estimated 200 billion stars and is 100,000 light years across or 600 quadrillion miles. This is so vast that if you could travel at the speed of light, which is 186,282 miles per second or 670,615,200 miles per hour, it would take you 100,000 years to arrive at the other end of the Milky Way! Wow, that is big!

Scientists estimate that there are some 125 to 200 billion galaxies in the known universe (some say there could be 100 times that number of galaxies, we just can’t see that far) with the next closest galaxy to the Milky Way, known as Andromeda, being 2 million light years away or 12,000 quadrillion miles (At the speed of light it would take 2 million years to reach). The Milky Way galaxy, Andromeda galaxy, and about 20 to 25 other galaxies further than Andromeda but nearest to the Milky Way than the other 100 to 200 billion galaxies, are known by astronomers as the “Local Group” of galaxies. The Local Group, are you kidding???

The incredible thing, our God made all of this. Isaiah 48:12-13 says this, “Listen to me Jacob, Israel, whom I have called: I am He; I am the first and I am the last. My own hand laid the foundations of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they all stand up together.” Our God, and we call Him our Father, spread out the heavens with His right hand. I guess that is why scientists tell us the universe continues to expand…our Father (God) is still spreading out the heavens and commanding the galaxies as He wills!!! And Jesus was there the whole time! The book of John starts out like this, “In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), and the Word was with God and the Word was God, ALL THINGS were made by Him and without Him was nothing made that was made” (John 1:1-3).

I have just two questions. If our Lord is powerful enough to create this vast universe, that we cannot even comprehend its size, is there any problem to big for Him? Second question, if our Father loved us so much that He would send Jesus, and Jesus loved us so much that He would come to this planet and die for our sins when we did not even know Him, is there any good thing that He would withhold from us? (See Romans 8:32) Something to make you go, hum!

Be blessed and be grateful.

Pastor Chris Hayden