I met one of the early designers of Google Earth last week. The application that has mapped all the dirt on the planet now includes views from our terrestrial P.O.V into the depths of space, (now available online as google.com/sky). Or maybe we're at the depths and most directions outward are the "shallows". The point is, with the use of photos gathered from the Hubble Space Telescope we can now see galaxies billions of light years away. And we see them through the perspective of our present point in the universe.
Robin, the Google cartographer, started with a zoomed in snap of a galaxy that looked like a dusky oval in the center of the screen. He described that this point (that looked about the same size as the word "point" in this blog), was something like over 100 million light years thick. One hundred years, traveling at the speed of light from the dot over the "i" to the bottom of the "p". In that galaxy, there are millions of stars, billions of planets and other objects. He said that our own galaxy, the Milky Way, was about a tenth the size of the one we were observing.
Then he did something I have done on the flat National Geographic map of the universe. He zoomed out.
As the huge "point" sized galaxy shrunk down until it was not even visible, just a part of the black, and stars filled the sky (the stars of our own galaxy), I remembered that outside that cloud of white dots, there are billions of other galaxies. Trillions of stars, and gazillions of planets and other orbitals.
Not only do you wonder about how we could be so terra-centric that we'd think aliens would come to visit us here, but even more impossibilities rise to the surface. Like, what business did the Creator of the Universe have here among us in the form of Jesus? And even more potent, why do I think my thoughts and deeds matter one ounce compared to that immensity?
I don't know. I do know that God is purported to be infinite, and all the "omni's", including the big one, "Omnipotent". I've only experienced omnipotence once, when Blaise was a 5 year old, and playing with his friend. They were doing what boys do, some war game, this time in outer space. They made laser sounds and blew up each other's bases, and soon there was an argument, "I'm laser proof", "Oh yeah well I'm bomb proof", "Well I'm rocket proof"... and finally, "well I'm Everything Proof!!" That seemed to end it, though I wondered why someone didn't create a laser that could blow up stuff that's everything proof.
That's about as far as my pee-brain can go. God - everything proof. More immense than all that Robin could show us with Google Earth, and with that omnipotence, (infinite, remember) there is the possibility to know us down to immeasurable detail. Seems hard to imagine of course, why, with all the interesting physics of the billions of planets in this galaxy alone, how could my troubles or thrills matter to God?
I've come to a conclusion out of this. Today, I'm going to do my best to leave God alone... well not totally. I'm going to work hard to hand over thanks and encouragement, in my small way, to the One whom I believe is responsible for all this. The beauty that is. He has done an amazing thing, and my petty complaints or wants (aka "needs"), are not what God deserves.
One thing I know, this planet is NOT the only dirtball in space. I'm convinced there are others. Have we been "visited"? It doesn't matter. What is important to me today is that I resonate with the other great omni, the Omnipresence. If everywhere at once it is, then here is there enough. That is, here is one of those wheres that God touches. What do I want Him to feel as he touches this "where"? I want it to feel to Him like joy, and wonder, and above all appreciation for who He is and what He has done. Today, as for me, I'm offering God my pittance of a gift. My love. Hope He likes it.