Perspective

Space is really big, as Douglas Adams noted in his epic 5-part trilogy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  In one section, a random character creates something called the Total Perspective Vortex, which was invented to give that character’s wife “a little perspective”.  It ended up being a torture chamber used to destroy our minds, on the realization of just how insignificant we are.  There are over 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy and at least 200 billion galaxies in the known universe.  To give some understanding on how big, it is 25 trillion miles to the nearest star outside our Solar system and, using a space shuttle, would take approximately 150,000 years to reach that star.  That is longer than humankind has been in existence.  

So how long has humankind been around?  If scientists are correct and the earth is 4 billion years old, and those years were put on the scale of a football field, all of humankind would stretch from the goal line (present day) back one entire inch.  Time is such a strange concept.  One moment stretches into another and before you know it, a minute has ticked by.  And an hour.  An afternoon.  A day.  The days glide by and before you know it, a week is now in the past, and a month.  A whole season.  A year.  And you look up and suddenly you are old.  Creaky knees, a shoulder that doesn’t quite work, a pile of vitamins and other assorted pills to power down every morning.  And one generation works to pass along what they know to the next and the next.  Few, if any, are remembered as more than a line on a family tree. 

How many branches are there on that tree?  If we are indeed all one family, there have been over 100 billion souls born into mankind over the last 100,000 years.  Picture the biggest stadium in the world.  Now picture one million of those stadiums, each full to the brim.  

Here is the kicker.  Elohim, the Creator God, is also Yahweh, our Lord God, and Messiah, the Anointed One, the Word made Flesh; and Parakletos, the Breath of Life, the Counselor, our Guide and our Friend.  As He made each one of those stars, named it and set it on its course, so He also made each one of us and provides a light to our path.  He knit us in our mother’s womb.  He has counted the number of our days.  He treasures the death of every Saint.  And He desires that each one of us comes to Him, but he will not force us to.  

What He says to each one of us is that our choices matter.  What we do every day is of utmost importance to Him.  It is so important that He was willing to become human and to die the most horrible death in the history of the world so that we could know Him and spend eternity with Him, which He showed in His Resurrection.  And eternity can start right now, if we say “yes Lord”.