The James Webb Space Telescope images give us a front-row seat to the wonders of Creation. The image below captures the Cosmic Cliffs from the Carina Nebula, located some eight million light years from earth.
What looks like jagged mountains and glittering stars is the edge of a massive, superheated “cavity” where stars are formed. This image’s tallest “peaks” are about seven light-years or 41 trillion miles high.[1] And this is one tiny speck hidden amid the heavens above.
Take a breath and pause for just a moment. This is truly awesome!
When an ancient, Middle Eastern king reflects upon the astonishing splendor of the heavens—a universe that we now know is about 40 billion light-years across— he poses a question that still boggles the mind some 3,000 years later:
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them? —Psalm 8:3-4
That is, amid the incomprehensible, virtually infinite expanse of Creation, the One who created and formed it ALL has set his thoughts and affections uniquely upon . . . us.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for 21st-century results-driven, efficiency-minded, control-oriented Christians is simply learning how to open ourselves up to this incredible love and respond to it.
Maybe this is the meaning of the Christian life.
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[1] Just for the sake of boggling the mind, light travels at 186,000 miles per second, so traveling at the speed of light for one year (one light year) is 5.88 trillion miles.