Wednesday, 5 January 2011

When the stars come out.

 

On BBC TV this evening, we were watching all the excitement on Stargazing live taking place over 3 evenings.
An interesting new series Stargazing Live started last night on BBC , running for three nights in a row. Professor Brian Cox hosts live stargazing, featuring various observatories around the world, and no doubt running the full scale from 'you can do this in your own back garden' to 'epic images courtesy of the world's biggest telescopes'.
A clear sky in the UK is like finding a treasure!

What was so striking were the upward-turned faces of astronomers, professors,enthusiasts,  photographers, amateur nerds, oohing and aaahing:  “that’s incredible!” “Never fails to take the breath away.”  “Utterly gorgeous”

and we wished they said something to this effect: 
Psalm 8
1 LORD, our Lord,
   how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
   in the heavens.
3 When I consider your heavens,
   the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
   which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
   human beings that you care for them?
Also….do those thoughts go through our own heads and hearts when the stars come out?
Have WE, while retaining the amazement and awe at creation, moved on to amazement at this Creator’s mindfulness of us and His care for us?
Or am I still tripped up by Satan’s lie to Eve in the garden:  "He doesn’t really care about you".  There's the width and height and depth of His love for us in Jesus to explore in the Word, in conversations with Christians, etc. And as Jesus' love and suffering and ressurection take our breaths away, so our motivation grows to love Him and others, to repent and change - etc.

  • Colossal  Jupiter with its storm-bands takes 12 earth years to do one orbit around the sun.
  • The planet itself spins like crazy. 
  •  There’s no solid surface on Jupiter and is orbited by 63 moons. 
  • The inner moon constantly erupts.
By the way, we looked out of our window a couple of times, but all we could see were clouds and a black sky!  That’s another story for faith and unseen things.  Just above those “flimsy” clouds are whole galaxies!