Two Sparrows

Have you ever looked out toward the horizon at some distant object and wondered how far away it might be? Maybe you've been to the coast and off in the distance you could see a ship just barely in sight.

If you've taken a vacation and driven out west you've probably had the experience of looking ahead to a mountain range and thinking it was only a few miles away. You know you'll be to it in a little while, but after driving all day, and then most of the next day you're still not there. When you do finally reach the mountains those trees you saw in the distance have turned out to be rocks. You are now looking up at a mountain a mile high that yesterday, at a distance looked about three inches tall. And there are houses and people on it that you didn't even consider when you viewed it from afar.

The ship on the horizon may be several hundred feet long. At about three miles (approximate distance to the horizon from the beach) it looks tiny. You can tell it's a ship but it impossible to make out any detail. You know there's a crew on board but you can't see them. You'll have to use your imagination.

An object on the horizon hundreds of feet long, but appearing very small two or three miles out, is relatively close to you. Close when you consider that the earth is 7,926 miles in diameter.

One night after dark, go outside and look up into the sky. The closest celestial body we can see is the moon. The moon is 238,000 miles from the earth. It is 2,160 miles in diameter. If you could drive to it averaging 70 mph it would take 142 days or 3400 hrs to get there. Imagine the telescope it would take to spot that ship on the horizon if it were as far away as the moon.

Our solar system includes the Sun, and the eight planets and Pluto that revolve around it. The planets are identified according to their distance from the sun. On the Earth we find ourselves third closest to the Sun.

The Sun is 93,000,000 miles from the Earth. It is 865,000 miles in diameter (109 times larger than Earth) and still looks small from our distance from it. Driving at 70 mph it would take 1,328571 hrs, 55,357 days or 151 years to get there.

Pluto (reclassified in 2006 as a dwarf planet) is 3,679 million miles from the Sun. We know it's there but we can't see it with our eyes alone. We need a telescope.

These tremendous distances and dimensions are all confined to our solar system. Science tells us that there are many solar systems made up of millions of stars and planets.

The next closest star to the Sun is 25,000,000,000,000 (trillion) miles away. Some stars are so far away that although they burned up years ago their light is just now getting to us. 25,000,000,000,000! There's not room for the digits of that number to be entered into the calculator on my desk. I can't even imagine how far that is. We have to calculate distances that great by using light years. That's how many years it would take light to get somewhere. Light travels at 186,300 miles per second.

It takes the Sun 225,000,000 years, travelling at 156 miles per second to orbit the galaxy. That is 4.3 light years to make just one orbit.

I'm 5'10" tall. I don't know how tall you are but try to imagine in the midst of the space, time and distance encompassed by the universe how insignificant we must be in relation to all that.

Surely the writer of Psalm 8 must have been thinking his place in this great creation when he wrote:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8:3-9 ESV)

Or as the psalmist puts it:

He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.
( Psalm 147:4-5 ESV)

The Bible says in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

Consider what Paul wrote: "but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us". (Romans 5:8 ESV)

Listen to the apostle speak about God's love for us:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,

to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.(Ephesians 3:14-21 ESV)

For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.(Romans 8:38-39 ESV)

There have been times in my life when I felt lost, confused, insignificant and hopeless. Maybe you have too. Well, that's when we need go outside and look up in the night sky to remember that in the midst of our trials and tests and difficulties we have a Father in Heaven who loves us and cares for us and counts us alone in all his unimaginable creation important enough to say:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. (Matthew 10:29-30 ESV)

How can we not feel better after thinking about that?