Star Shepherd
“Lift up your eyes on high and see who has created these…” (Isaiah 40:26)
Some night, when you’re away from the lights of the city, look up. There in the heavens you’ll see a luminous band of stars, stretching from horizon to horizon, the “Milky Way”—our galaxy.
Our galaxy is a massive, flattened, rotating disk of stars 80,000 light years in diameter. If you could travel at the speed of light (approximately 186,000 miles per second) it would require 80,000 years to traverse our galaxy. It contains about 400 billion stars.
In 1995 two astronomers in Baltimore, Md. conducted what became known as the Hubble Deep Field Study: They took an exposure of a small patch of sky and discovered over 3000 galaxies (not stars, galaxies) in that tiny portion of space. Based on that discovery, astronomers now estimate that there are more than a trillion galaxies in the cosmos, each containing billions of stars!
Yet, each night, without fail, God “brings out their host by number …He knows them all by name. By the greatness of His might and the strength of His power, not one is missing” (Isaiah 40:26).
Sometimes, when I fly into a large city, and see innumerable lights below I wonder how God can possibly care about me. I think, “My way is hidden from the Lord” (Isaiah 40:27). Perhaps you do too.
Please know that the Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, the one who names and numbers the stars knows you by name!
You will never be forgotten.
DHR
