In The Beginning

For the past three nights, I was privileged to go outside to an open field after the sun had set. The first night I went alone, and the moon had just risen. The field was lit up by the moonlight. Very beautiful. The second two nights, Tyler and I went together, and the moon came up later so we were able to see the stars very clearly. It is truly incredible!

Last night in particular was gorgeous. Tyler saw two shooting stars (meteorites), and we could see the edge of the Milky Way. I tried to photograph the Milky Way, but it is very hard to see in the picture:

It was gorgeous nonetheless. Looking at the Milky Way edgewise is a crazy thought. I've seen pictures of the Milky Way, and it looks like a disk. So to look up there and realize that you're looking along a disk edgewise that 1) you are in the middle of, and 2) is absolutely HUGE is really something. In a sense, when you look up at the stars, it looks like a black sheet with white spots on it. There's no perception of depth. But when you try to fathom how far away those stars are . . . It's awesome.

To further boggle the mind, recognize that all of those stars and all of that incredible amount of space were created by God, at His Word, and that before then none of these stars even existed. But even then, His Word was. The Word, identified as Christ Jesus Himself in John 1, was in the beginning. He was with God, and He was God (John 1:1). His identification as "the Word" is fascinating indeed. He was God's "creative agent," the tool He used to create both the living physical world as well as living spiritual beings. What a fascinating concept! Worth meditating on, without a doubt.

Tyler got some REALLY amazing star pictures. You can see his work on his flickr, found in the links page above.