Elisabeth Elliot said, “An article appeared in the National Geographic years ago which has affected my thinking ever since. “The Incredible Universe,” by Kenneth F. Weaver and James P. Blair, included this paragraph:
How can the human mind deal with the knowledge that the farthest object we can see in the universe is perhaps ten billion light years away! Imagine that the thickness of this page represents the distance from the earth to the sun (93,000,000 miles, or about eight light minutes). Then the distance to the nearest star 14-1/3 light years) is a 71-foot-high stack of paper. And the diameter of our own galaxy (l00,000 light years) is a 310-mile stack, while the edge of the known universe is not reached until the pile of paper is 31,000,000 miles high, a third of the way to the sun.
Thirty-one million miles. That’s a very big stack of paper. By the time I get to thirty-one-and-a-half million I’m lost–aren’t you? I read somewhere else that our galaxy is one (only one) of perhaps ten billion.
I know the One who made all that. He is my Shepherd. This is what He says: “Mine hand also hath laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand hath spanned the heavens: when I call unto them, they stand up together. ..Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go. …. O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments! then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea: “ (Isaiah 48:13, 17, 18).—
Almost always the question comes, in one form or another, Why does God do this to me?
When I am tempted to ask that same question, it loses its power when I remember that this Lord, into whose strong hands I long ago committed my life, is engineering a universe of unimaginable proportions and complexity. How could I possibly understand all that He must take into consideration as He deals with it and with me, a single individual! He has given us countless assurances that we cannot get lost in the shuffle. He choreographs the “molecular dance” which goes on every second of every minute of every day in every cell in the universe. For the record, one cell has about 200 trillion molecules. He makes note of the smallest seed and the tiniest sparrow. He is not too busy to keep records even of my falling hair. Yet in our darkness we suppose He has overlooked us. He hasn’t.
