Psalm 19:1-4 (New Living Translation)
The heavens proclaim the glory of God. The skies display his craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or word; their voice is never heard. Yet their message has gone throughout the earth, and their words to all the world.

The above image popped up on my computer this morning from the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s a composite of images taken over the course of a decade. I burned about a half hour just looking at it in complete awe. This image — which contains over ten thousand galaxies — represents not the whole of our universe, but just one small section, looking out into Earth’s sky in the southern hemisphere.*

Wow! Oh, wow!

I admit I’m a science geek. Actually, I don’t admit it — I revel in it! I’m fascinated by the theoretics of faster-than-light tachyon particles. I am intrigued by how the human body is put together, especially the complexity of the brain. I love the paradox of light, which has properties of both wave and particle. I’m awed by the elegance of our shared genetic structure and by the implications of new epigenetic research. But most of all, I love the mind-bogglingly large cosmos we live in, full of galaxies, supernovas, dark matter and energy, black holes, quasars, cosmic rays, magnetic fields… oh, I could go on and on (and on).

Someone asked me years ago how I could be both a nerd and a pastor. How could I embrace both faith and science? I firmly believe that the more we learn about the universe and our place in it, the more we learn about God. After all, God created it! Just look at this amazing, fabulous, gorgeous, intricate, vast universe God gave us to explore.

If you’re interested more thoughts on this, here’s a message I delivered back in 2012 on the subject: Faith & Science.

Question:
What amazes you the most about God’s creation?

* If you would like to see just how small a section was studied for the Hubble image, click here. Prepare to be awed by all our universe contains!