Psalm 63:5 (RSV) reads, “My soul is content, as with marrow and fatness, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips.” I love to rest in the presence of God and utterly relish the moments with the Lover and Maker of our souls. There I find the contentment of which the psalmist writes. Meditating on verses like this while gazing heavenward into a dark, star-spangled night sky only enhances this intimacy with our Creator.
Image 1 shows the dark dust lanes blocking the light of billions of stars in a nearby spiral galaxy. Similar dust lanes are also visible as we view our home Milky Way Galaxy edge on, too (Image 2). Isn’t it great that we have a local version of an extragalactic vista in our backyard? Many Christian astronomers believe the Cosmos is Divinely fine-tuned to make human life possible. They further hypothesize that the fine-tuning also permits the best observational platform to see as much of the Universe as possible. For instance, living as we do between the spiral arms of our Galaxy keeps our Solar System from wandering too close to other stars. However, it also means that our view is unobstructed to see the rest of the Universe outside our Galaxy. Isn’t God clever?
I’ve also mediated about our influence in both the physical and spiritual worlds. As part of my graduate research on Mars, I can request certain areas on Mars to be photographed by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. My influence literally extends across the Solar System to Mars! I once told that to a friend of mine and he countered, “As Christians, our influence transcends the Universe to allow us to talk with God!” He rightly put me in my place. More amazing and humbling than influencing a spacecraft at Mars is that any of us can so personally and intimately talk with God. It is only in Him–not just in what He has created–that our souls find the perfect contentment of the psalmist.
Image 1. Spiral Galaxy NGC 3190. Dark cloudy lanes of interstellar dust block light from other stars. Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Hubble Legacy Archive/Robert Gendler.
Image 2. The edge of our home Milky Way galaxy from Earth’s surface. Note the dark dust lanes and the galactic central bulge to the lower right. Part of a backyard telescope is visible at right. Credit and Copyright: Howard Edin, 2009. Used with permission.
