My Experience at a Local Planetarium, and the Amazing New James Webb Telescope Pictures

Earlier this year I watched a wonder-provoking show in the local planetarium depicting the size and expanse of the known universe. Our planet, the solar system, the milky way, and the known galaxies beyond that we’ve captured pictures of through space telescopes permeated the screen as I rolled through the cosmos along with the rotating screen. These telescopes use infrared radiation which is invisible to the human eyes, but which emits heat, and then these heat patterns are converted into pictures. I think space photography would be an exciting profession to get involved in!

What stunned me and that stuns all of us when we learn of it, was how small our world is in comparison with the universe, and just how many galaxies exist beyond us. It struck me that it would take someone who is Himself limitless to bring a thing of such proportions and interconnected complexity into being. The universe is exactly what we would expect a divine Being to create and the evidence is over-powering. He deals in light years and measurements of what seems like almost infinite proportions to us finite people.

In July the James Webb Telescope released the first images of the deepest view of the universe we’ve ever seen to the unanimous delight and joy of human beings all across the world. The photo captures a portion of the sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length. In that grain of sand thousands of – not planets, not stars – but entire galaxies never before seen by humans were revealed. Thousands of galaxies in a grain-sized portion of sky. Wow. It’s humbling and awe-inspiring and wonder-provoking.

I left the planetarium with joy beaming up from my spirit into my whole being and when the James Webb Telescope images were released later in the year this joy only increased. Truly God’s love is infinite. And not only infinite, but it’s perfect. It’s exactly what we each need. It’s the exact thing we need. Jesus came to the one tiny world in the midst of zillions and zillions of galaxies to save this one little planet. To save me, just one person. He didn’t come as a king, but He even lowered Himself to the level of a baby in a manger. This was intentional. He was sending a profound message of the vastness, sincerity, the nature and quality of His love. He did it for us, for planet earth, to save that one planet from destruction, to save me from sin and death. He poured out all the vastness of that infinite love upon me.

This isn’t the attitude any of us would have (before conversion anyway; after conversion God gives us the ability to be like Christ though finite and He is infinite), or any earthly ruler or wealthy individual. To give their lives for one planet or one person when they had literally zillions of other planets and loyal subjects who respected them and treated them with genuine love. We would call it a small loss and move on, focusing on our net assets, deeming it not worth the all-encompassing loss of our very life. We’d be focusing on our rewarding and exciting future prospects and investments. We’d cut off that lost planet like it was nothing.

But God did the unbelievable instead and left the glories of that throne in heaven to come to the fallen planet and live a life in obscurity and ridicule and death. The universe loves Him – oh how much they love Him – for valuing a person enough to give His own life to save them. The angels and unfallen being take this personally. They know that though they personally never sinned, Christ’s love for them is as great as it is for the people He died to save. All created beings made in His image are that valuable to Him and He proved that by coming to this world and dying for lost men. His love for all His “sons” (beings made in His image) is without measure.

The reason I was swelling up with joy was I knew I was loved by Infinite Love Himself. Loved far beyond my capacity to even understand. I remember feeling/thinking that this love is enough, and more than enough. Finally! Something that satisfies and not just satisfies but evokes joy and gives purpose and meaning to life for all eternity beyond comprehension. It’s a never-ending spring of love and joy that gushes up and fills the earth again and again in an ever-increasing way.

See, the world will tell you you need self-love or that you need the love of another person to be happy. But even if you get that and their love is genuine, it’s not going to be enough. Another person can’t fill you up and satisfy you. Only God’s love is enough, and it’s far more than enough, to the point where I wanted to shout a shout of relief, satisfaction, victory and gratefulness that I had found such love, like one might shout if they found a billion dollar fortune while treasure hunting.

There’s a difference between finding a billion dollars in a treasure chest and finding a million. And they each provoke a different response in proportion to their value. Someone who has found a million might be very happy, but finding a billion dollars might cause someone to faint. It’s more money than they ever thought they’d ever see in their entire lifetime, all the years combined. It’s beyond any plans they had for themselves, even their most ambitious ones.

This is how I felt when I went to that planetarium and saw those space photographs. Like I’d discovered not a million dollars, but an amount that knocked me off my feet and went beyond my comprehension.
It will be Christmas in two days. Jesus gave us the immeasurable gift of Himself and His infinite love. It’s time to find that pearl of great price that alone can meet the needs of the soul, and let go our white-knuckled grip on things that can never satisfy. One of the reasons we’re white-knuckling those things and so worried we won’t get enough of them or that someone might take them away from us or thwart our efforts is because they don’t satisfy and they aren’t enough for us, so we’re hungry and we’re miserable, and we’re desperate. And as long as we hold so tightly to things that can’t ever satisfy us we’ll always be miserable and desperate, and never filled.

We’re actually right that we need more, we’re just wrong about what we need. The nature of what we need. More money won’t satisfy because money is unable to satisfy. More self-love and self-worship won’t satisfy it will just add more guilt and pain and cause us to implode and self-destruct because we’ve spent too much time and energy focusing inwardly. We’ll become narrow and selfish and destructive to others around us. Good health and recovering from illness alone isn’t enough. Removing outer struggles and hardship and pain isn’t enough because we’re suffering from an inner condition of the heart. We have fallen natures and no amount of reducing outward hardships will fix that.

More friends won’t satisfy because although it’s important to have good friends, people aren’t God and they can’t fully understand us. They are always on the outside. They can’t forgive us of our sins or make us holy and at peace; they are completely unable to do anything like that. They can’t provide us with objective purpose. Friends and family each need purpose of their own and they can join us in our high calling and work beside us, but they can’t create or provide purpose for us. Only God can.

We need God Himself to be happy and at peace and to be made right and washed from our sins and forgiven and free. Even if we could own the whole world it would not suffice, because it’s just the wrong thing entirely.

We need not only to know Christ loves us, but to love Him back. To let God give us his heart and his mind. Then to follow in His footsteps. Christ left heaven for us. We must leave the worship of self to take up the Name and the cause of God in a world that hates and shuns Him and will hate us because they hate us. To meet the needs of others – both practical like food and clothing and the need for Bible truth and the gospel – and draw them to Christ, As a gift back to the One who loved us. This attitude and mindset of being a servant and of taking the lowest place in order to do the most amount of good, rather than exalting self, is what He asks from us, and what we need. This is worship. To endeavor to become like Him and to walk in His footsteps, not just to appreciate Him from afar but never walk in His steps. To say “I love you” back with our actions to the One who gave all for us. Every child of God can do this and Jesus appreciates and wants our love.