I was watching the night sky here in Edmonton, Canada. In these wintry days, its cloudy but somehow clearer than usual, more noticeable in some way. I remembered the days when I was in Nigeria, where every night showed sparkling stars covering the night sky. The moon shone at nights, other nights it would be cloudy, but most nights I and my family would sit outside at night and watch the night sky. We would often discuss about the vastness of space, and how the small twinkling stars are actually huge suns.
Here’s a video that may help you get a little sense of the size of the universe. The video is from YouTube originally, and is an excerpt from the documentary “Cosmic Voyage” (1996). “Cosmic Voyage” was nominated for an Oscar in its category, and is based on another documentary from the 1970s called “Powers of Ten” (1968, 1977). In turn, “Powers of Ten” is based on a book called “Cosmic View” (1957). Just some interesting facts about the video. Before reading ahead, why not watch the video first 
Watch Clip from Cosmic Voyage
Just to clear some terminology in the video, 1 light year is the distance traveled by light in 1 year. And we are using light as our measure because its got the fastest speed. How fast? About 300 million meters per second. But how fast is that? Well, a beam of light could travel around the Earth 7 times in 1 second!
I don’t know about anyone else, but watching that video I felt small, I felt very insignificant trying to find the Earth even from out of the vast view of the universe, let alone finding myself on Earth! From the view of the Milky Way, we couldn’t see all our fancy inventions, iPhones, Shakespere’s works, the Soccer World Cup, Grey Cup, my home, nothing was obvious. Here’s a verse from the Bible that comes to mind:
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)
Who is this that the verse is talking about, whose fingers can create the heavens? Christians believe that everything, from ants, to humans, to the magnificently large galaxies were created by God. But how can we be sure of this? As I watched the video, the macro- and micro-design in our universe struck me. Is it logical to expect a designer when we see intricate design? Here is another verse from the Bible that is worth considering:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world (Psalm 19:1-4).
That sense of design and designer that comes to us when we see nature is the speech of creation, without voices, without sound, telling us, point us to God. But why do we need to think about this? Or anything else for that matter, given that we are seemingly insignificant and our galaxies seem like dust particles in the grand scale of the universe? Let’s investigate what God thinks about us from the Bible, starting from Luke 15:3-6:
Then Jesus told them this parable: Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them (Luke 15:3-4).
Let’s pause here before we continue. What would you do if you had 100 sheep and lost 1 of them. In the modern world, its a little hard to think about loosing sheep and putting value to them. How about substituting sheep with iPhone, or Blackberry, or laptop, or even cars 
What would you do if you had lots of phones and lost one of them? Hopefully you would have synchronized your contacts across these phones 
I’d probably forget about it.
Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep (Luke 15:4-6)
That seems like a strange thing to do. Jesus seems to be suggesting doing something that’s quite the opposite of what we normally would. And on top of that, there is even a celebration party afterwards! Would you celebrate if you found 1 pen out of 100 that got lost? What is Jesus trying to say? Digging deeper, let’s look at the actions of Jesus in his life for more clues:
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, ”Do you want to get well?” ”Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, ”Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. (John 5:1-9)
In this story, there are a lot of people with many lying around a pool. These people are not really chilling out, and its not a pool party either. They are people who can’t walk, can’t move, diseased, paralyzed. And its not just a few, but many of them. In our modern society, more so back then, these people were regarded as unproductive, and outcasts. They were not contributing to the progress of society and humanity, they were not helping the economy, they seem to be neglected by their families even. Sort of insignificant one could say. For some reason, Jesus goes into this area and picks out one particular man. This man has been paralyzed for 38 years, a long time! He was, in many ways, even more of an outcast than the others, having been unproductive for about 4 decades now! Jesus picks out this man and heals him.
Jesus, in this story is reaching out to a “lost sheep”, to someone seemingly insignificant. Jesus did this at other times too. At another time, Jesus healed 10 men with leprosy (Luke 17:11-15). Leprosy is a contagious disease of the skin that rots the skin. People having this disease were thrown out of society for obvious reasons and quarantined in their own societies. Jesus again reaches out to people who were very low and insignificant on the social scale and heals all of them. You may be wondering how this relates to you. It does, because Jesus died on the cross for you.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
You may still be wondering how even this is important to you. The Bible tells us that in the beginning of human existence, we sinned (Genesis 3:1-24). But we don’t really need to go back to the beginning, sin exists even today. People do all kinds of bad things and the news is full of it. The Bible says “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) . But there are consequences of our actions. Justice demands it because our whole existence is built on cause-and-effect, we see it in everything. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), which may seem extreme. But here’s the thing, God clearly warns Adam and Eve that if they disobey him, they would die (Genesis 2:17). But Adam and Eve, like so many of us today, decide that God doesn’t really know what’s going on or maybe He is lying (Genesis 3:4-5).
We are a creation gone bad. Would a creator reach out to a failed and rebellious creation?
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
What John 3:16 is telling us is that God didn’t discard us, but gave a substitute to bear the consequences of our sins. This substitute is Jesus, a very different man. But God didn’t just give a substitute, God is the substitute! The Bible tells us that Jesus is God. God actually died for us, we are that important to him, He loves us that much.
In our lives, we try to be significant by being rich, famous, or do good things. But are we really remembered for these things? For how long? Are these things significant from billions of light years away in the universe? But see yourselves through God’s eyes, and we are so important to Him that he came down into his own creation and stayed on that iota of speck among specks called Earth, and even helped us out of our problems, even death. He reached out to us with love, and has given us the way to life forever: faith in Jesus. Does God know what he is saying? Can we be significant by ourselves? How will you respond?
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Are we significant?
28 11 2010I was watching the night sky here in Edmonton, Canada. In these wintry days, its cloudy but somehow clearer than usual, more noticeable in some way. I remembered the days when I was in Nigeria, where every night showed sparkling stars covering the night sky. The moon shone at nights, other nights it would be cloudy, but most nights I and my family would sit outside at night and watch the night sky. We would often discuss about the vastness of space, and how the small twinkling stars are actually huge suns.
Here’s a video that may help you get a little sense of the size of the universe. The video is from YouTube originally, and is an excerpt from the documentary “Cosmic Voyage” (1996). “Cosmic Voyage” was nominated for an Oscar in its category, and is based on another documentary from the 1970s called “Powers of Ten” (1968, 1977). In turn, “Powers of Ten” is based on a book called “Cosmic View” (1957). Just some interesting facts about the video. Before reading ahead, why not watch the video first
Watch Clip from Cosmic Voyage
Just to clear some terminology in the video, 1 light year is the distance traveled by light in 1 year. And we are using light as our measure because its got the fastest speed. How fast? About 300 million meters per second. But how fast is that? Well, a beam of light could travel around the Earth 7 times in 1 second!
I don’t know about anyone else, but watching that video I felt small, I felt very insignificant trying to find the Earth even from out of the vast view of the universe, let alone finding myself on Earth! From the view of the Milky Way, we couldn’t see all our fancy inventions, iPhones, Shakespere’s works, the Soccer World Cup, Grey Cup, my home, nothing was obvious. Here’s a verse from the Bible that comes to mind:
Who is this that the verse is talking about, whose fingers can create the heavens? Christians believe that everything, from ants, to humans, to the magnificently large galaxies were created by God. But how can we be sure of this? As I watched the video, the macro- and micro-design in our universe struck me. Is it logical to expect a designer when we see intricate design? Here is another verse from the Bible that is worth considering:
That sense of design and designer that comes to us when we see nature is the speech of creation, without voices, without sound, telling us, point us to God. But why do we need to think about this? Or anything else for that matter, given that we are seemingly insignificant and our galaxies seem like dust particles in the grand scale of the universe? Let’s investigate what God thinks about us from the Bible, starting from Luke 15:3-6:
Let’s pause here before we continue. What would you do if you had 100 sheep and lost 1 of them. In the modern world, its a little hard to think about loosing sheep and putting value to them. How about substituting sheep with iPhone, or Blackberry, or laptop, or even cars
What would you do if you had lots of phones and lost one of them? Hopefully you would have synchronized your contacts across these phones 
I’d probably forget about it.
That seems like a strange thing to do. Jesus seems to be suggesting doing something that’s quite the opposite of what we normally would. And on top of that, there is even a celebration party afterwards! Would you celebrate if you found 1 pen out of 100 that got lost? What is Jesus trying to say? Digging deeper, let’s look at the actions of Jesus in his life for more clues:
In this story, there are a lot of people with many lying around a pool. These people are not really chilling out, and its not a pool party either. They are people who can’t walk, can’t move, diseased, paralyzed. And its not just a few, but many of them. In our modern society, more so back then, these people were regarded as unproductive, and outcasts. They were not contributing to the progress of society and humanity, they were not helping the economy, they seem to be neglected by their families even. Sort of insignificant one could say. For some reason, Jesus goes into this area and picks out one particular man. This man has been paralyzed for 38 years, a long time! He was, in many ways, even more of an outcast than the others, having been unproductive for about 4 decades now! Jesus picks out this man and heals him.
Jesus, in this story is reaching out to a “lost sheep”, to someone seemingly insignificant. Jesus did this at other times too. At another time, Jesus healed 10 men with leprosy (Luke 17:11-15). Leprosy is a contagious disease of the skin that rots the skin. People having this disease were thrown out of society for obvious reasons and quarantined in their own societies. Jesus again reaches out to people who were very low and insignificant on the social scale and heals all of them. You may be wondering how this relates to you. It does, because Jesus died on the cross for you.
You may still be wondering how even this is important to you. The Bible tells us that in the beginning of human existence, we sinned (Genesis 3:1-24). But we don’t really need to go back to the beginning, sin exists even today. People do all kinds of bad things and the news is full of it. The Bible says “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) . But there are consequences of our actions. Justice demands it because our whole existence is built on cause-and-effect, we see it in everything. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), which may seem extreme. But here’s the thing, God clearly warns Adam and Eve that if they disobey him, they would die (Genesis 2:17). But Adam and Eve, like so many of us today, decide that God doesn’t really know what’s going on or maybe He is lying (Genesis 3:4-5).
We are a creation gone bad. Would a creator reach out to a failed and rebellious creation?
What John 3:16 is telling us is that God didn’t discard us, but gave a substitute to bear the consequences of our sins. This substitute is Jesus, a very different man. But God didn’t just give a substitute, God is the substitute! The Bible tells us that Jesus is God. God actually died for us, we are that important to him, He loves us that much.
In our lives, we try to be significant by being rich, famous, or do good things. But are we really remembered for these things? For how long? Are these things significant from billions of light years away in the universe? But see yourselves through God’s eyes, and we are so important to Him that he came down into his own creation and stayed on that iota of speck among specks called Earth, and even helped us out of our problems, even death. He reached out to us with love, and has given us the way to life forever: faith in Jesus. Does God know what he is saying? Can we be significant by ourselves? How will you respond?
Like this: