It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. Jeremiah 10:12 ESV
The power of God is amazing, awesome, and inconceivable.
Scientists tell us that all things in the universe are made up of molecules; which are made up of atoms; which are made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons; which are made up of quarks and gluons. Nobody has ever seen even a picture of a quark because the smallest ones are calculated to be 500,000,000,000 times smaller than the most powerful electron microscope in the world can see.
At the same time, scientists calculate the size of the known universe at 93 billion light years. In round numbers, a light-year is about six trillion miles.
The Milky Way Galaxy is a measly 120,000 light years across, which is still a thousand trillion times larger than Earth. Stated another way, Earth is a million, million, million times smaller than the Milky Way.
Granted, all of that is absolutely inconceivable to our minds. (The math involved alone gives me a headache.)
But not to God.
Behold, these are but the outskirts of his ways, and how small a whisper do we hear of him! But the thunder of his power who can understand?” (Job 26:14 ESV)
Not only does God understand all of that, He spoke it all into being. By His understanding, He stretched out the heavens. He established the world by His wisdom and the earth by His power.
It’s a good thing to ponder both when my problems seem insurmountable and when I think I’ve really got something figured out. It puts things in perspective.
Bible.org records the following about one of our most legendary presidents: William Beebe, the naturalist, used to tell this story about Teddy Roosevelt. At Sagamore Hill, after an evening of talk, the two would go out on the lawn and search the skies for a certain spot of star-like light near the lower left-hand corner of the Great Square of Pegasus. Then Roosevelt would recite: “That is the Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda. It is as large as our Milky Way. It is one of a hundred million galaxies. It consists of one hundred billion suns, each larger than our sun.” Then Roosevelt would grin and say, “Now I think we are small enough! Let’s go to bed.”
By the way, Teddy Roosevelt never had a college degree. (And, as long as we’re talking about being humble, that little factoid is something I read inside the cap of a bottle of iced tea.)
Today’s Praise
By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. (1 Corinthians 6:14 NIV)