For Want of a Nail

I enjoy reading history books.  Recently I have been reading about The War of the Roses in England.  The final battle of the War of the Roses was on August 22, 1485.  King Richard III met the outnumbered forces of Henry Tudor at the Battle of Bosworth Field.  William Shakespeare wrote a historical play on the life of King Richard III around 1590. 

In the play the pivotal moment of the battle is shown. The morning of the battle, Richard hurriedly sent a servant to make sure his favorite horse was ready.  “Shoe him quickly,” the man told the blacksmith.  “You’ll have to wait,” the blacksmith answered.  “I’ve shoed the king’s whole army the last few days, and now I’ve got to get more iron.”  “I can’t wait,” the groom shouted impatiently.  “The king’s enemies are advancing right now, and we must meet them on the field.  Make do with what you have.”

So the blacksmith bent to his task.  From a single bar of iron he made four horseshoes.  He hammered and shaped and fitted them to the horses’ feet.  Then he began to nail them on.  But after he had fastened three shoes, he found he didn’t have enough nails for the fourth.  “I need one or two more nails,” he said, “and it will take some time to hammer them out.”  “I told you I can’t wait,” the king’s servant said impatiently.  “I hear the trumpets now.  Can’t you just use what you’ve got?”  “I can put the shoe on, but it won’t be as secure as the others.”  “Will it hold?” asked the groom.  “It should, but I can’t be certain.”  “Well, then, just nail it on.

When the armies clashed, Richard was in the thick of the battle, riding up and down the field, cheering his men and fighting his foes.  In the thick of battle as he valiantly rode into the enemy lines, one of the horse’s shoes flew off.  The horse stumbled and fell, and Richard was thrown to the ground.  Before the king could grab at the reins, the frightened animal rose and galloped away, leaving Richard all by himself.  Richard looked around him.  He saw that his soldiers were turning and running, and Henry’s troops were closing around him.  He waved his sword in the air.  “A horse!” he shouted.  “My kingdom for a horse!”  But there was no horse for him.  A moment later Henry’s soldiers were upon Richard, and the battle was over.

Not long after the battle the following rhyme appeared in print.  For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, For want of a shoe, a horse was lost, For want of a horse, a battle was lost, For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

As Christians we are in a battle; the battle between good and evil.  On the battlefield small things have big consequences.  In reality there are no small things on the battlefield.

The Apostle Paul gave us a list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verses 7-10.  “To one person the Spirit gives the ability to give wise advice; to another he gives the gift of special knowledge. The Spirit gives special faith to another, and to someone else he gives the power to heal the sick. He gives one person the power to perform miracles, and to another the ability to prophesy. He gives someone else the ability to know whether it is really the Spirit of God or another spirit that is speaking. Still another person is given the ability to speak in different languages, and another is given the ability to interpret”.

Whether they are big or small, all spiritual gifts are important.  Spiritual gifts are given only to help others. They are not for our own selfish benefit.  Spiritual gifts are service oriented, and those who use them, those who exercise them, will grow.

I call it the River Principle. If your life flows like a river, always passing along life and energy to those around you, then you will be pure and clean.

But if you’re like a pond, face it; you can only hold so much stuff.  And then, no growth takes place.  The water becomes stagnant and stinky and bad stuff grows there and mosquitos breed.

That’s why I believe Paul wrote what he did after giving us the lists of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12.  What's the next chapter after 12? 

I Corinthians 13 is often called the love chapter.  In verses  1-3 Paul writes, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels."  (That's a spiritual gift)  "But have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.  And though I have the gift of prophecy."  (That's a spiritual gift)  "And understand all mysteries and all knowledge."  (There's another spiritual gift)  "And though I have all faith."  (That is a spiritual gift).  "So that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.   And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor."  (There is yet another spiritual gift)  "And though I give my body to be burned."  "But have not love, it profits me nothing."

Love is the underlying principle of every spiritual gift.  No matter what we are doing, if love isn’t the underlying principle it is meaningless.

  

For want of a nail, a shoe was lost, For want of a shoe, a horse was lost, For want of a horse, a battle was lost, For want of a battle, a kingdom was lost, And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Love is the nail that holds our lives together.  It is what gives us purpose.  Whatever else we think we are accomplishing, whatever gifts we have, everything will fall apart and the battle will be lost if we don’t have love.

Walking With Papa

Over the Christmas holidays I got to spend a week with my granddaughters.  Although I had seen my youngest granddaughter take a few steps previously, this was the first time that I had seen her walking.  Once she started walking she couldn’t be stopped.  She seemed to be walking constantly every waking minute.  She especially liked to walk up and down the stairs. 

Watching her walking everywhere and trying to keep up with her reminded me of the time when my oldest granddaughter first learned to walk.  Although she could take a few steps, what she really wanted to do was to hold my hand and walk.  She wanted to go outside and walk up and down the sidewalk holding on to one finger. Holding on to my finger she had all the confidence in the world and could walk for hours. One afternoon we spent an hour walking outside as fast as her little legs could go. I kept expecting her to get tired of it, but she wanted to keep going. If I even tried to walk toward the door of the house she wouldn’t go that way.

 When we went inside after more than an hour of walking, she kept going to the door and pounding on it. She wanted to go back outside and walk some more. Because I was the one who would take her walking she wanted to spend a lot of her time with me.

I had always loved my granddaughter, but getting to spend so much time with her made me love her even more. Walking together made us both closer to each other. I think that there are a lot of parallels between her experience learning to walk, and our experience being born again. When we are born again we are baby Christians and we have to learn to walk spiritually.

God used that illustration in Hosea 11:3 where it says: “I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms”. In many places in the Bible the idea of God helping us walk with Him are brought out. In Psalms 37:23,24 the Bible says:  “The steps of the godly are directed by the LORD. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will not fall, for the LORD holds them by the hand.” What a beautiful illustration of the Christian life. We are to walk with God and he has promised to hold our hand.

Do we learn to walk with God in the same way that we learned to walk as babies, by trial and error?  Do we stand across the room from our Father and take wobbly footsteps towards Him as he calls to us from a distance "Come to Daddy”.  Do we fall down repeatedly as we try to get it right? God has a different plan for us. Psalms 56:13 says “You have delivered my soul from death. You have kept my feet from falling, so I will walk with you in light among the living”. God doesn’t want you to fall. He wants you to hold his hand.

As parents we want our children to learn to take care of themselves; to stand on their own two feet.  We realize that we won't be there for them forever. They need to learn to take care of themselves. So from babyhood to adulthood we are continually learning how to take care of ourselves.  God's goal for us is very different. He is our Eternal Father; He is always available to us. Instead of wanting us to become increasingly independent, He wants us to learn to be increasingly dependent on Him. He wants us to walk with Him, our hand in His. He doesn't want us taking off on our own two feet. I believe that as human beings this is one of our hardest lessons.

Have you ever taken a walk on a busy street with a two year old? You point out to him the pretty gardens you are walking past; the beautiful flowers, the scampering squirrel, the pretty song bird; but he's not interested. He's too busy trying to pry free from your hold. He can't stand holding your hand. He's a big kid now. He wants to walk on his own.

We as Christians are often like that. Instead of clinging to our Father's hand, we have this tendency to take off on our own two feet. There are so many charming things that take our attention from Him. Sometimes we don't like to be restricted by holding his hand. Some of those Bible principles cramp our style. Sometimes we let the cares of this world pull us away from Him, and instead of holding tighter to His hand, we let go.

Whenever we let go we inevitably fall down and hurt ourselves and then we sink into discouragement and we look to God and we say "Father, what's this all about? Why did you let me fall?  Why didn’t you stop this from happening to me?" And then He looks at us sadly and says "Child, you let go of my hand. You took off on your own. I am able to keep you from falling, but you must keep your hand in mine."

We don’t know what is before us. The future can be a frightening thing.  Our only safety is in walking with Christ, our hand in His.

Identity Theft

"Who am I?" I can show you my driver's license, social security card, passport, a birth certificate, credit cards,  – and they all prove to you that I am Richard Lawry born in Madison, Tennessee. There is no one else in the entire world who can be me.  That is unless I become a victim of identity theft. Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personally identifying information, like your name, Social Security number, or credit card number, without your permission, to commit fraud or other crimes.

The FTC estimates that as many as 9 million Americans have their identities stolen each year. In fact, you or someone you know may have experienced some form of identity theft.

I recently experienced this problem when I noticed some charges on my bank account that I knew I had not made.  After numerous calls to the company, and promises that the money would be refunded it never was.  Identity theft is a serious problem.

A few months ago I read in the news a bizarre identity theft story.   Jakadrien Turner ran away from home in the fall of 2010 when she was just 14. She left home under duress caused by her parents' divorce and her grandfather's death. Jakadrien made her way to Houston, where she was soon arrested by police for shoplifting a white shirt, black vest and jeans.

That's when things took a bizarre turn. Jakadrien gave the police a false name and her new alias just happened to match up with the name of a 22-year-old Colombian citizen who had been in the United States illegally. To compound Turner's plight further, the Colombian national had a warrant out for her arrest. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement then deported Jakadrien in April 2011.  After Jakadrien was deported, she was given a work card in Colombia and released onto the streets.

 Her grandmother, Lorene Turner, had been looking on her computer every night for clues to her granddaughter's location, and was cooperating with Dallas police as she carried out her search.  She spent months monitoring Facebook postings she believed to be her granddaughters that led her to think that she was in Columbia. 

When the story was reported in the U.S. media, The Colombian Institute for Family Welfare confirmed that Turner was in its custody.  After a joint investigation by U.S. and Columbian authorities, Jakadrien Turner arrived back in Texas, eight months after she was mistakenly deported to Colombia.

As sad and disturbing as this story is, Jakadrien brought these problems upon herself by using a stolen identity. 

Now I’m sure that you or I would never think of being identity thieves.  A person’s identity is the most important thing that they own.   How does the Bible identify you?  In 2 Corinthians 6:18 The Bible tells us, “I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, Says the Lord Almighty.”

You are a child of God, but someone wants to steal your identity.  We read in Rev 13:16,17 “ He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads  and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 

Satan knows our true identity as sons and daughters of God, but he wants to give a new identity.  He wants to give us his name. 

There is a passage in Exodus 34 where the name of God is equated with his character.  We read in verses 5 and 6, “Now the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth.”

God has given us his name just like a father passes on his name to his children.  God’s true identity is His character.  He wants our identity to be His character, but Satan also wants our name, our identity, to be his character.

Satan’s character, the name he wants to give us, is outlined in 2 Timothy 3:1-5 where it says, “this know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.  For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.

If we see ourselves anywhere in this passage we are guilty of identity theft.  God’s character, the name he has given us, is found in Galatians 5:22,23   The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. 

Don’t be like Jakadrian who stole the identity of someone and ended up being deported.  You are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.  You are a child of the king of the universe.  With an identity like that why would we want to be an identity thief?  

Christmas Gifts

As Christmas approaches one of the things that most people focus on is gift giving.  We spend a lot of money and time finding the right gifts for people that are important in our life.  Sometimes we fail in our gift giving.

One Christmas when my son was a young boy, we nearly ruined his Christmas with one particular gift.  One of the jobs that he was given around the house was sweeping the kitchen floor.  That Christmas we bought a stick vacuum cleaner and thought it would be funny to give to him as a gift.  When it was wrapped, the vacuum was the largest gift under the tree.  When my son saw that the largest gift had his name on it he was very excited.  His imagination went wild.  What could that present be?  His whole Christmas revolved around the largest gift under the tree.  When Christmas morning arrived, all he could think about was that gift.  When he opened it, he was so disappointing that the rest of his Christmas presents couldn't make up for the vacuum cleaner fiasco.

Have you ever been disappointed by a gift?  Has someone been disappointed by the gift you gave them?  What about great gifts?  What is the best gift you have ever received? What made it so special? Was it the value of the gift? Was it the person who gave it to you? Was it because it was so unexpected?

As I think about this question I find it hard to narrow down one particular gift as the best. There is one gift that I received that was very special for a number of reasons. One of the reasons this particular gift was special is that I still don’t know who gave me the gift. Let me tell you the story.

In February 2004, 17 members of my church raised 20,000 dollars and went to San Pedro, Belize in Central America to build a church. While we were there we made lots of friends. We were only in San Pedro for a short time, but by the time we left the walls of the church were finished. During the following months, the church members in San Pedro finished the church building. Plans were made for a church dedication service to be held in February 2005. I was invited to come to the dedication service. I really wanted to go. This church building project had been very important to me, and I had made many friends in San Pedro that I wanted to see again. There was just one problem. I couldn’t afford the trip.

One day I received a letter in the mail from Fare Finders Travel. Why were they sending me a letter? When I opened the letter I was surprised by what it said. Please come in to Fare Finders to make arrangements for a round trip ticket to Belize. Someone has paid for the ticket, but they want to remain anonymous. I couldn’t believe it. My wife immediately tried to figure out who the anonymous donor was. She still hasn’t cracked the case. It is still an unsolved mystery. The mysterious ticket has to be one of the best gifts I have ever received.

We made plans to go back to San Pedro. As we packed and attended to all the details of the trip, the mystery giver was in our thoughts. Who was this person who had given such a meaningful and valuable gift? How could we thank the giver?

Our trip to Belize was wonderful. It was very special to me to see the completed church building. The dedication service was beautiful and moving with people from several different countries participating. We got reacquainted with friends that we had made the year before, and made many new friends the 10 days that we were there. Many times friends would stop by our room with gifts such as fresh coconut water, papaya, or some small trinket. On the last day we were in San Pedro, there was a steady stream of visitors at our room. They wanted to tell us goodbye. Most of them brought a gift.

We received one gift that was very special to me. My wife made a special friendship with a little 2 year old boy who spoke only Spanish. Whenever he would see her his face would light up. He didn’t understand English, but he understood the language of love. The day we were leaving he and his 4 year old sister came to our door with a gift. They gave us a well worn 1941 Walking Liberty half dollar. I have no idea how this little family had come into possession of this coin, or why they gave it to me. Even though the monetary value of the coin is only a few dollars it is one of the most precious gifts I have ever received.

I learned an important spiritual lesson on my trip to Belize. I learned it from the people that I met. They had such a desire to do something for us. Even though they had only meager possessions, they had such a desire to please. They wanted to see us before we left. They had to bring us a gift. It was very important to them. To me that showed how I should relate to God. God, I don’t have anything but I want to give you something. God let me know what I can do to please you. God I want to be with you.

In Romans 6:23 the Bible tells us “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord”. God has given you the best gift ever, what will you give God this Christmas?

Thank God For Grace

We recently celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday.  In the U.S. there has been an annual Thanksgiving observed since 1863.  In that year, with the county involved in a horrific Civil War, President Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring a day of Thanksgiving. 

One of the traditions of Thanksgiving is talking about the things we are thankful for.  There are many things, but I am truly thankful for my family.  

The Greek word translated thanksgiving is eucharista.  The English spelling is Eucharist.  My dictionary gives the following definitions.   1.  The sacrament of Holy Communion; the sacrifice of the Mass; the Lord's Supper.  2.  The giving of thanks; thanksgiving.

The word that most people use to describe the Lord’s Supper means thanksgiving.  What a great thought.  The Lord’s Supper is a ceremony in which we give thanks for what Jesus has done for us.  The root word in Eucharist is charis.  Charis is normally translated as grace.  That makes sense.  Think with me for a moment.  What happens at the beginning of your Thanksgiving meal?  Someone says “grace”.  Why do we say that they say grace?  Saying grace is giving thanks. 

At a British conference on religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C.S. Lewis wandered into the room.  “What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”

After some discussion, the conferees had to agree. The notion of God’s love coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, is singularly Christian.  Of all the world’s religions, only Christianity dares to make God’s love unconditional.

In 2 Timothy 1:9, the Bible says, “He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began”.

Before you were born there was grace for you.  Thank God for grace!  As wonderful as it is, grace is not well understood and often not really believed. We use the word a lot but rarely think about what it means. It's probably true that most of us think infrequently about God's grace. 

Part of our problem is in the nature of grace itself. Grace is scandalous. It’s hard to accept. It’s hard to believe. It’s hard to receive. We are skeptical when a telemarketer tells us, "I'm not trying to sell you anything. I just want to offer you a free trip to Hawaii." Automatically we wonder, "What's the catch?" because we have all been taught that "there's no free lunch."

Grace shocks us in what it offers. It frightens us with what it does for sinners. Grace teaches us that God does for others what we would never do for them. We would save the not-so-bad. God starts with prostitutes and then works downward from there. Grace is a gift that costs everything to the giver and nothing to the receiver. It is given to those who don't deserve it, barely recognize it, and hardly appreciate it.

Grace means that no one is too bad to be saved. The Bible is full of examples; Liars, cheaters, murderers, adulterers, prostitutes.  God specializes in saving really bad people.

Grace also means that some people may be too good to be saved. That is, they may have such a high opinion of themselves that they think they don't need God's grace. They may admit they are sinners but they don't admit they are spiritually dead.

This view of grace is hard for good people to accept because it means we must give up our "goodness" in order to be saved. We must admit that nothing we have done matters in the least when it comes to being forgiven by God. God has designed our salvation so that he alone gets the glory!

Ephesians 2:8,9 tells us,  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast”.

Imagine what heaven would be like if you had to earn your way there. "I was a preacher." "I built churches across the world." "I gave a million dollars to world missions." "I had hundreds of baptisms at my meetings." "I volunteered at the hospital." “I baked cookies for the school kids.” As good as those things are they will not help forgive even one sin. They will not save you or help save you. 

Can you just imagine someone putting his arm around Jesus and saying, "You and me, Jesus, we did it: You died on the cross and I baked the cookies”? I am so thankful that it's not like that. When Jesus died on the cross, he paid the full price for your salvation. Jesus paid the price all by himself.

Grace is never cheap.  Grace costs the ultimate.  It is just that you and I aren’t the ones paying.  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life”.  John 3:16

Thank God for grace!   Look for grace in unexpected places. I know that you will find it. Paul tells us in 1 Timothy 1:14, "the grace of our Lord is exceedingly abundant".

The Verdict

I was reading Shawn Boonstra's blog and read his comments concerning the Casey Anthony verdict. I was so in agreement with his thoughts as he expressed them in his blog that I adapted them for use here at My
Spiritual Journey. I usually only present my original thoughts on this blog, but Shawn's ideas were so powerful that I decided to present them here in modified form.

The most talked about news story of the week was that Casey Anthony was acquitted of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008. One thing is clear: someone is guilty. Little girls don’t end up duct-taped and garbage-bagged in the woods all by themselves. Collective public outrage has been building in the days since the “not guilty” verdicts left the American public speechless.

I struggled with the verdict myself. As a grandfather of young girls, my blood almost literally boils over when I hear about people mistreating them. And the fact that the most likely perpetrator was acquitted is hard to take. She just looked so guilty. Her stories didn’t add up. In the hours since the verdict was read by a court clerk who appeared as visibly troubled as the rest of us, I have begun to consider the possibilities.

One possibility, I don’t want to admit. Twelve jurors might, maybe, somehow, be right. It’s possible that the rest of us have been drawn by the scent of blood into a public feeding frenzy. Like most people, I honestly don’t think so, but I have no choice but to admit that it’s a possibility.

The more comforting thought is that Someone knows every last detail of the case. The Bible reminds us that real justice will have to wait for the final judgement. We can rest in the knowledge that God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:14) He is particularly attentive to the needs and rights of children.

I don’t like it, but the jury has spoken; the judge has agreed. I will make every effort to keep it from happening to someone else, and will guard my neighbor’s children like my own. I will also, to the best of my ability, share the only thing that can bring genuine hope in a cruelly twisted world – the redeeming, converting love of Jesus.

Someone is guilty of something: little girls don’t end up stashed in the woods by accident. If Caylee’s cruel death has stirred such emotion in our own sin-stained hearts, imagine the way it hurts the heart of Christ. I imagine myself to be incapable of such horrific sins, but I have caused my share of pain, for I am a sinner. I have never had to hide a body, but I am painfully aware that Jesus equates hatred with murder. By Jesus’ standards, I have murdered, stolen, failed to honor my parents, taken the Lord’s name in vain, broken the Sabbath. So have you. More times that any of us would care to admit.

Now here’s what is really unfair. I am going to be acquitted. I’m going to be released from the wages of sin, (death), even though I certainly do not deserve it. My sins killed the Son of God, but I won’t receive the ultimate wages of sin because Jesus was condemned for our sins, in which He had no part, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no part. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His.

Now I’m not at all happy with the Casey Anthony verdict. It seems like somebody ought to pay for such a horrible atrocity. But I am also keenly aware that I myself am standing in heaven’s courtroom, with angels marveling at the fact that Jesus plans to take me into the kingdom after all the times I’ve broken God’s law. “He has not dealt with us according to our sins,” the Psalmist reminds us, “nor punished us according to our iniquities.” (Psalm 103:10)

Was Casey Anthony undeserving of her verdict? Quite possibly. Maybe even probably. I know for a fact that I don’t deserve mine.

Higher and Higher

When I was attending grade school during the 1960’s I had two passions that consumed me. I loved baseball. I chewed lots of really bad gum to collect baseball cards. As much as I loved baseball, what really intrigued me was space exploration.

My heroes were the astronauts in NASA’s space program. I read everything about them that I could get my hands on. In 1969 my interest in space was at a fever pitch. Everyone was talking about the race to land on the moon. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, the entire world was captivated. Every newspaper covered the story. I soaked it all in. I couldn’t believe what a marvelous world I was living in. The moonwalk was a part of pop culture. After watching the moonwalk on TV, the Moody Blues drummer, Graham Edge, penned the poem "Higher and Higher", which was used to open their next album.

"Blasting, billowing, bursting forth
with the power of ten billion butterfly sneezes.
Man, with his flaming pyre
has conquered the wayward breezes.

Climbing to tranquility,
far above the clouds,
conceiving the heavens,
clear of misty shroud.

Vast vision must improve our sight.
Perhaps at last we'll see an end
to our own endless blight,
and the beginning of the free.

Climb to tranquility,
finding its real worth,
conceiving the heavens,
flourishing on earth".

As I listened to these words I realized even as a boy that this optimism that space exploration would make the world a better place wasn’t the way things would be. I read in my Bible in Obadiah 1:4, “Though you ascend as high as the eagle, and though you set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down, says the Lord”.

As a Christian I had always looked at space exploration as a way to learn more about the awesome things God had made. I was excited by the new discoveries and what they could show me about how awesome God is. As I studied science and read about space I always kept God in the picture.

While I went through High School I stayed interested in space, but there were many other things to interest me and take up my time. I realized that as interesting as space exploration was it wasn’t changing things here on earth. By now there had been 6 moon landings and moon walks. In just a few years astronauts on the moon had gone from the most exciting and talked about thing on the planet to ho hum, so you can drive a vehicle on the moon. The space race was over and pop culture had found other interests.

NASA didn’t recapture the interest of most Americans until 1981, when the Space Shuttle Columbia made the first flight of a space vehicle that returned to earth and was reusable. Once again man seemed on the verge of conquering the heavens. One of the exciting new directions in space exploration was the Hubble Space Telescope. In 1979 work was started on this new project. After many delays it was finally launched in 1990. Nothing NASA had done since landing on the moon captured the interest of the American public as much as the Hubble Telescope.

The images that the Hubble produced were breathtaking. When I first saw the images I thought of the words of David found in Psalms 19:1, “The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork”.

One Hubble photo in particular fascinates me. It is called The Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Astronomers picked a seemingly empty spot in the sky. Staring at the spot in the sky for ten days, Hubble kept taking pictures one after another for the entire exposure time, accumulating data. Astronomers put the exposures together into one final picture. Each time they added an exposure, the view got deeper, revealing fainter objects. When they were done they had the deepest picture ever taken of the heavens.

The image is of a small region in the constellation Ursa Major. It covers an area 2.5 arcminutes across, one part in a million of the whole sky. The image contains an estimated 10,000 galaxies. That would mean that the whole universe contains a million times 10,000 galaxies. Astronomers estimate that our home galaxy, the Milky Way, contains between 200 and 400 billion stars. How many stars are in the universe? I will let you do the math.

Isaiah 40:26 tells us “Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out one after another, calling each by its name. And He counts them to see that none are lost or have strayed away”.

The universe staggers our imagination. It is humbling to realize that our planet earth is simply a speck of cosmic dust in the great universe that God has created. David was amazed by God’s love for us. In Psalms 8:3,4 he wrote, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him And the son of man that You visit him?

Go outside tonight, take a look at the sky and know that there is a Creator who cares for you, who died for you and wants to bring you home to live with him.