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Brian Greene in his book, The Elegant Universe imagines going backward in time to learn about the origins of the universe.

“As we imagine running the clock backward from the age of the presently observed universe, about 15 billion years, the universe as we know it is crushed to an even smaller size. The matter making up everything - every car, horse, building, mountain on earth, the earth itself, the moon, Saturn, Jupiter and every other planet, the sun and every star in the Milky Way, the Andromeda galaxy with it’s 100 billion stars and each and every other of the more than 100 billion galaxies - is squeezed by a cosmic vise to astounding density. And as the clock is turned back to even earlier times, the whole of the cosmos is compressed to the size of an orange, a lemon, a pea, a grain of sand, and to yet tinier size still. Extrapolating all the way back to the beginning, the universe would appear to have begun as a point - the whole universe erupted from a microscopic nugget whose size makes a grain of sand look colossal! (was that microscopic point of condensed energy just one thought of God?”) “

The physical world is a wonder - filled phenomenon of unity. The same laws that govern the laws of thousands billion billion stars distributed among the 100 billion galaxies of our universe, also govern chemical reactions within the 0.001 centimeter of a cell.

Do you realize where you are? You’re in cosmos star flung with constellations by God, a world God wakes up morning and puts to bed each night.

Although God may not appear to us in a vision, he makes himself known to us in all the many ways that he describes to Job, from the macro to the micro, from the wonders of the galaxies to the little things we take for granted. He is the creator of the unfathomable universe all around us - and he is also creator of the universe inside of us.

According to physicist Brian Greene, science has only in recent years begun to overcome the century - old rift between the laws of the large - general relativity, and the laws of the small - quantum mechanics. In other words, they are interwoven and connected, from beginning to end, and everywhere in between. The micro is harmoniously joined with the macro! But from a theological viewpoint, they never were divided!

Whether we peer into the universe of the telescope or the universe of the microscope, we cannot help being amazed at the varied complexity of the created order.”

In my lifetime, astronomers have “discovered” 70 billion more galaxies - biologists who gaze through microscopes, rather than telescopes have discovered unfathomable complexity in the simplest cells! The DNA molecule inside each cell contains a three-billion letter software code. But who wrote it, and why? Can anyone guide us in reading not only the micro code inside each cell, but the macrocode governing the entire planet or the universe?

- Philip Yancey for those who lie in the Borderlands of Belief - Rumors of Another World

We live in one thin slice of the universe, stuck on Earth’s surface, never venturing into the realm of the very large or the very small.

While most of us would agree that there is nothing too big for God, would you also agree that there is nothing too small for God? Have you ever even considered the smallness of God? Just as God is the creator and sustainer of the planets, stars, and galaxies, he is also the creator and sustainer of atoms, electrons, and protons and moves freely throughout both worlds.

Not very long ago the scientific world all agreed that the Earth was the center of a small, finite universe, and nothing was known about secret, hidden micro world teaming with color, variety and billions of life forms! Little by little, with the aid of modern technology, man kept enlarging his view. With each discovery, whether in the micro or the macro, we once again echo David’s prayer:

I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way? - Psalm 8

Since this study is the magnificent mundane, I think it is only right to briefly discuss the two, rather average and mundane men, whom God choose to use to open the door, for us into the magnificent micro and the macro worlds. First, the micro-universe:

Lying just beneath the surface of the everyday is a world we’d hardly recognize.

Technically, both worlds of the large and small - general relativity and quantum mechanics took off in the 1920’s. Max Plank is considered the father of quantum mechanics (Micro), and Einstein is known as the father of general relativity (Macro). But due to the microscope and the telescope, I want to focus on these two people.

Einstein was a most remarkable man: absent-minded, humorous, a loner, unkempt, but yet was the mind chosen by God to unlock mysteries of the Cosmos that no one had ever come close to finding.

Michio Kaku in his book, Hyperspace says it well, “The life of Albert Einstein appeared to be one long series of failures and disappointments. Even his mother was distressed at how slowly he learned to talk- his elementary school teachers thought him a foolish dreamer. They complained that he was constantly disrupting classroom discipline with his silly questions. One teacher even told the boy bluntly that he would prefer that Einstein drop out of his class. He had few friends in school. Losing interest in his courses, he dropped out of high school. Without a high school diploma, he had to take special exams to enter college, but he did not pass them and had to take them a second time. He even failed the exam for Swiss military because he had flat feet! After graduation, he could not get a job. He was an unemployed physicist who was passed over for a teaching position at the university and was rejected for jobs everywhere he applied. Finally, through the influence of a friend, he handed a lowly job as a clerk at the Swiss patent office in Bern, earning just enough money so his parents would not have to support him. On his meager salary, he supported his young wife and their newborn baby. Lacking financial resources or connections with the scientific establishment, Einstein began to work in solitude at the patent office. In between patent applications, his mind drifted to problems that had intrigued him as a youth. He then understood a task that would eventually change the course of human history.

I dare you to pronounce his name! It’s a little tricky and one of the reasons we don’t know him well. Leeuwenhoek is pronounced “Lay -U-wen-hook, now you can impress your friends by saying his name! He was born in Holland and on October 24, 1732, although he had an intense curiosity as a child, nothing noteworthy or unusual is recorded of his youth. Later as a young man he began work as a lens grinded and became very skilled at it. While working as a lens-grinder he began building his own microscopes. It is sometimes mistakenly written that he invented the microscope, but that is not true. Microscopes were first invented almost 40 years before he was born. But those early microscopes were not good and highly impractical. The best thing they could magnify was round 20-30 times natural size. Then Leeuwenhoek started making microscopes with his lenses, because of his great skill, excellent eyesight, and precise lighting, he was able to see objects magnified over 275 times natural size! No one had ever looked closely into that micro world before, and he was astonished as anyone at what he found! He was the first to see a host of formerly unknown microscopic creatures such as: Foraminera, nematodes, and rotifers, and many other incredible life forms who if they were large enough to be seen with our eyes in our world, we would see an exotic world of creatures, making the most graphic science fiction movie seem tame! Leeuwenhoek became famous and in 1680 was elevated as a full member of the royal society, joining a larger group of scientific luminaries. But he was not impressed with his newly elevated status, he refused to attend any meetings and continued to make incredible microscopic discoveries until the last days of his life, he died on 8-30-1723,

God, in his sovereignty, was pleased to open up his vast microscopic world to mankind, using a layman, not a professionally trained scientist. Furthermore Leeuwenhoek had no fortune, no high education and only spoke Dutch. But yet God used him to make people aware of another world crowded with innumerable tiny creatures!

Author David Bodanis recently published an amazing book entitled, The Secret House. In it, he follows the average, mundane life of a person from waking up in bed until retiring once again at night. Although it however he reveals some of the other millions of tiny creatures that also live with each of us and how they interact with us. Here’s an excerpt:

Now venturing even further into the micro universe than bacteria and living creatures, the word “atom” comes from the Greek, and simply means “something that cannot be divided.” For many years, it was thought that atoms were the smallest building blocks of everything and truly could not be divided. But how little we know! As science progressed, it was discovered that atoms consisted of even smaller things called protons, neutrons, and electrons. And atoms, as the world saw at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, can indeed be divided and split resulting in the release of a huge amount of energy ( a dynamic and clear example of Einstein’s famous equation of E=mc2). But are electrons, protons and neutrons the smallest building blocks in the universe? No! Later, it was discovered that these elements also consisted of even smaller elements now known as Quarks! There have been many types of quarks identified, some are known as up quarks, down quarks and even some are simply called strange quarks. Quarks are so tiny, that they make an atom seem large, and they are almost always described as crazy, weird, and seem to live in the borderland between time and space, between reality and the metaphysical. These little devils must be the tiniest of the tiny, the bottom of the barrel, the real “atom” - the one undivided element. The answer…No! Well at least in theory, but backed up by endless data from tests and mind-boggling mathematical formulas!

“An inventory of all the known subatomic particles runs into the hundreds , the electron, proton, and neutron are merely three among a zoo of subjects.”

At this particular time in science and physics, it is believed that the tiniest, most micro element of everything, the one true undividable thing that’s so small, it is almost ghostly are called: strings or super strings. Many of today’s physicists believe that these super strings must exist, but as of today they are still undetected and the string theory remains only that- a theory. Nevertheless, there is growing evidence for their existence and it won’t be long before this theory may be proven as factual science. What are super strings? If they exist, a super string loop is a hundred million billion times smaller than the nucleus of an atom! They are the tiny rubber bands that are constantly vibrating, and hold everything together. Listen to Richard A. Swenson’s description of them in his book, More Than Meets the Eye. “Strings are like ultra-thin vibrating rubber bands. It seems the entire universe if one huge disco, filled with infinitely tiny elastic filaments twisting and vibrating rhythmically.” (the entire universe may be one big guitar!)

“The more deeply matter is probed, the more bizarre it seems. Particles which in turn are composed of still lesser particles in what has been termed a particle zoo.“

It is almost beyond belief when you begin to grasp the smallness of the micro-world of super strings. To help you grasp their size differential, this illustration helps put things in perspective. Image, if you can, four things that have very different sizes, but each one is smaller by approximately the same proportion:

The step in size from each of these things to the next is roughly the same. Each entity is 10 20 times smaller that the one that preceded it. Physicist Brian Greene has stated that if an atom was enlarged to the enormous size of our entire solar system, which includes Earth, the sun and all our planets and moons, a string would compare in size to a small tree. He estimates that super strings are a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of an inch long.

In other words, think how much smaller the nucleus of an atom is compared to this huge earth - then also think, that’s how much smaller a super string is when compared to the nucleus of an atom!

So what does all this mean to us in context of the magnificent mindset? Richard A. Swenson says it well from More than Meets The Eye:

“One important lesson is that God has created at deeper levels than previously known. How does he master detail at such size dimensions? Is there anything yet smaller than strings? Does he have all the strings in the universe counted? What does this say about his ability to monitor the macro-details of our individual lives? “

Now let’s move on to discuss some of the macro universe and its founding father.

Just as Leeuwenhoek discovered the microscopic world; Hubble discovered the macroscopic universe. ( I realize that Galileo before him was the first to peer through his own powerful telescope and see our backyard – the solar system – but in the context of the hugeness of space and galaxies, Hubble is the one to focus on for those honors)

Edwin Hubble was born in the town of Marshfield, Missouri in 1889, but lived through his late childhood and teenage years in the Chicago suburb of Wheaton.

Hubble was a promising, though not exceptional, student in school. His skills actually stood out much more in sports than academics, where he excelled in basketball, boxing, baseball and broke records in high jumping. He did find time to study, and earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics and astronomy from the University of Chicago. He then went on to Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, but did not continue in astronomy, instead he studied Law. In 1913, he started his own small law practice in Louisville, Kentucky. But it didn’t take long for him to realize that his passion was not law but astronomy. After further studies, he got his doctorate in astronomy from the University of Chicago in 1917. Following a tour of duty in WWI, he then took a job with the Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California which had the world’s most powerful telescope.

Because of this telescope, and another that he assisted in designing and built, plus his keen eye and hunger to discover new things, Hubble opened up a new world of the macro universe and shocked the entire world at what he had found. Before Hubble, the Earth was known to be within the Milky Way Galaxy, but our Galaxy was believed to be the entire universe, with our sun possibly at the center. But what Hubble discovered and proved, was that our milky way galaxy was but one of many (billions) of other galaxies, each having billions and stars! Furthermore, these Galaxies are all moving away at tremendous speeds!

Also, by the various light spectrums they emit, he also proved that the farther away a galaxy was, the faster it was moving! Suddenly, not only is our earth just a tiny speck in a huge cosmic ocean, but so is our average sized star- the “sun” also our enormous galaxy is also just a speck of untold billions of others also moving through space. These discoveries were astounding!

Even Albert Einstein visited Hubble and admitted a mistake that he previously made by preceding with the idea that the universe (while they thought was our galaxy) was stable and fixed. Even though all his equations told him different, he didn’t believe it was moving and expanding until he saw it with his own eyes! All the stars are soaring through space at high speeds, they just seem fixed to us because they are so far away, plus we are moving too! Hubble showed that galaxies are like huge caravans carrying stars throughout the universe.

Also, not only do stars group together, galaxies also cluster together. Our own Milky way is part of a little cosmic neighborhood of galaxies called “The Local Group.” (about 30 galaxies) We are speeding toward our nearest neighbor galaxy, Andromeda, for a head-on collision at 200 thousand miles per hour, but don’t wait up for it, it’s still millions of years away! Our entire local group is spreading toward what’s known as “The Great Attractor” at a million miles an hour. Possible a huge black hole to suck us all into, but again, not anytime in the near future!

The distances of stars and galaxies are mind-boggling, even to trained astronomers. There are billions of stars, in each galaxy, and untold billions of galaxies! Do you realize how many stars that puts in the universe? Is God aware of all of them? Of course! The Bible states that not only did God make them, he has them both counted and each star named! Why do I worry that somehow he overlooks me some days?

Thus God, the Holy of Israel, Israel’s master says “do you question who or what I’m making? Are you telling me what I can or cannot do? I made the Earth, and I created man and woman to live on it. I handcrafted the skies and direct all the constellations in their turnings. Isaiah 45:11-12

So here are the two men God choose to use to open up the micro and the macro. One is a lens grinder, the other a lawyer, both with highly inquisitive minds, both however, were open to new and different worlds outside of there normal reality. Even though we may not have the education or similar opportunities as them, let me ask a few questions for us to honestly ask ourselves. Do we also think outside the box? I’m not speaking of atoms-stars but the things we see around us and of God moving in our own lives. Can we allow God to give us glimpses of another world? Can we see God and bits of his Kingdom interwoven through the rubble of everyday mundane life all around us? Do we have any clue or idea of how awesome God must be to create, and move between the tiniest super string to the largest super cluster of galaxies and everything in between? Can we begin to really trust him?

“When God created, he made some things much larger than our human experience and other things much smaller. In the midst of this range there is an apparent symmetry, as if we were the center point of his creation - which of course, we are.”

These huge size dimension in the macro, and ultra-tiny dimension in the micro are extremely difficult to comprehend to most of us lay people. We all know that stars and galaxies are far away and atoms are tiny, but usually that’s about how far our grasp goes, and we fail to become awestruck with wonder. Consequently, we fail to get a grip on how big, awesome and powerful God really is!

First, for the micro, here’s a few comparisons to help us put things in perspective.

? An atom compares to an orange in the same relative dimensions as the orange compares to the entire Earth.

? To see an atom with our own eyes, we would have to shrink down to a billionth of an inch in height.

? To count the atoms in a drop of water would require every human on Earth counting one atom per second for twenty thousand years.

“No matter how hard you try you will never be able to grasp just how tiny, how spatially unassuming is a proton. It is just way too small. Protons are so small that a little dab of ink like the dot on this eye - I - can hold something in the region of 500,000 of them! “

Starting to get a grip on the micro world? Maybe you’re starting to feel very big--don’t! You’ll be shrunk down quickly in the macro dimension comparisons next!

Keep in mind that these comparisons are all for the atom - which is actually huge when comparing quarks and super strings to it. Actually, the next smaller in line to the atom is the electron, proton, and neutron. We’ll talk more on these hyperactive things in a bit. Let’s move into the smaller quarks within each electron, proton, and neutron, also in each tiny atom. Quarks, (actually pronounced like the birds larks, or Noah’s Ark, but however you pronounce them, they’re incredibly tiny!) about a billionth billionth of a meter. To do size comparison, first enlarge an atom until it fills the distance from here to the moon. At that size, the nucleus of the atom would be the size of a football field - and a quark would be the size of a golf ball! They are so small, Gerhard Stahuhn says, “Quarks are located somewhere between matter and spirit.”

Once you get a grip on the unbelievably tiny quark’s dimensions, they begin to look big when compared to the most current bottom of the barrel, smallest, tiniest thing yet -quantum strings. It is still not proven that they exists, although through mind- boggling, mathematics, and ongoing quantum testing, their existence is almost certain and soon to be proven as science advances. A quantum super string loop is thought to be a million billion times smaller that the nucleus of an atom! Brian Greene wrote an award-winning book on string theory for people like you and me called, The Elegant Universe. If you want to go further into the awesome beauty of string theory - read that book.

We are ourselves poised between the cosmos and the micro-world. It would take as many human bodies to make up the suns mass as there are atoms in each of us.

Remember what we were taught in school about four dimensions? Remember the group “The Fifth Dimension” who, in the 1960’s, sang about the Age of Aquarius? The TV show, “The Twilight Zone” spoke of another dimension as well. In string theory proves right, Brian Greene says that in order for it to exist and function, takes, ten or eleven dimensions! (I personally suspect even one more -12 dimensions as 12 is God’s number and the number of Heaven as seen in Revelation Chapter 21) The micro world of the tiny is extremely bizarre, more on that in a moment, but let’s do some size comparisons in the macro world.

In the past decades, most scientists believed the universe was both infinite and eternal, in other words, no bounds, no beginnings, and no end. Today, however, few scientists believe in an infinite, eternal universe, which by the way, is very appealing, because it is spiritually neutral. But due to the increase of knowledge and technology, today most believe the universe can be measured, possibly, between 10 and 20 billion light years across, with our little earth floating in a little galaxy somewhere in that big bubble. Because of Hubble’s discoveries, we also know that all the galaxies are moving away at tremendous speeds. If you do all the math, and count backwards, most believe today that the universe came into being in the big bang about 12-15 billion years ago. Within the universe are at least 100 billion galaxies, and within each galaxy is at least100 billion stars! The galaxies are not spread out evenly, most are in clusters, but some are secluded - the “Great Wall” (a huge super cluster - a gathering of clusters of galaxies by gravity) discovered in 1989 is the largest structure we know of in the universe with a huge concentration of galaxies looking like a big wall.

A good comparison is this: Imagine the entire universe is your living room. Now look at your furniture, those are the galaxies and the stars are the dust on that furniture! Planets like Earth are way too small to even be seen in context of the huge cosmos.

Science fiction writer Douglas Adams had a grip on the immense vastness of the universe in his series “The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy.“ One of his main characters encounters the ultimate death machine. It’s called the total perspective vortex. It gives it’s unfortunate occupant a view of the whole infinity of the universe - and then you see yourself in relation to it. What happens to any creature getting this view, is a fried brain and quick death!

Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is part of about 30 other galaxies in a cluster called “The Local Group.” But how local are they? It is like going over to your local pub or coffee shop one day? Let’s try to put some of this in perspective: Let’s suppose we actually have invented a starship which can travel at the fastest speed in the known universe - the speed of light. (186,000 miles per second) Traveling at that speed, we leave Earth and reach the moon in 1 ½ seconds. We zoom past Venus in 2 ½ minutes. In a little over eight minutes, we are now just at the sun. So far, pretty local at the speed of light, we continue outward from earth and reach the distant planet Pluto in 5 ½ hours. So much for our little solar system, but we want to continue, and boldly go where no one has gone before (except in Star Trek). How about visiting the nearest star next to our sun called Proxima Centauri, then you had better plan on more than 4 years at this top speed. Once we get there, we decide, let’s go all the way on this cosmic vacation and see the whole galaxy! Just to cross the width of our little galaxy, one of a billion in space, would take about one hundred thousand years traveling at this incredible top speed of light! It is a fact that time stops, but by the time we got home, things would be much different and a lot older by thousands or millions of years! Once we got bored traveling through our Milky Way, heck, why not visit the next closest galaxy, Andromeda! Ok, but at the speed of light, now sounding very slow, it would take about 2 ½ million years just to get there!

If you were really curious and wanted to visit the farthest objects we can see in space from the Hubble space telescope, better allow for a least 12 billion Earth years! Just last night I watched one of the recent “Star Wars” series movies again and was, once again, amazed at how small they make space to be! They are flying around the galaxy and talking with each other like we do at home all living in the same time zone, the same zip code and the same local area! I love the entire “Star Wars” series, but it must drive people trained in science mad! The laws of physics are nicely put aside for the sake of a good story and entertainment.

Our galaxy alone is enough to blow any one’s brain when grasping its immense size. But the universe is peppered with at least 100 billion galaxies, each containing billions of stars! These galaxies are not stationary! They are all moving and at great speeds, including our own Milky Way. Hubble also proved that the farther out a galaxy is, the faster it is moving, giving much more evidence for a big bang at some distant point in the past. (Yes, I believe in the Big Bang, and in a big God who created it all and set it in motion!) However, the term “Big Bang” in unfortunate and was first coined by Fred Hoyle in a sarcastic negative view of it. I believe, as many, that although it was big, there was no “bang” or explosion - but rather a highly controlled (by God) expansion of space-time, which continues today. The entire space-time-matter continuum, we call the universe, is expanding and inflating. ( That may explain many of our waistlines as we age too) Not only is it all expanding - but recently it was discovered and confirmed that this movement is not slowing down, but rather accelerating!

But the galaxies, in a literal sense, are not zooming through space, but space-time itself, as it expands, is moving and taking everything along with it! Do these moving galaxies ever collide and crash into one another? Yes, fairly often in fact our own Milky Way is speeding for a head-on collision with our nearest neighbor, Andromeda. When they collide, the billions of stars in each one will probably never hit each other. It’s almost unbelievable, but true because they are simply so far apart the chances of two of them colliding are, well - astronomical! For instance, imagine there are four snails running loose in the continental United States for a Billion years. The odds of two of them bumping into another are about the same for two stars hitting in a galaxy collision.

“Science without Religion is Lame - Religion without Science is Blind.” -Albert Einstein.

Now I know that these facts are astounding, but they can also simply just go over our heads and have little practical meaning in our day to day mundane lives. Personally, they do the opposite for me in increasing my awe and appreciation of God and my faith in his involvement in my daily life. But at this point, if you’ve been with me this far, let me ask you just a few questions:

? Is God just watching from a distance, or is he intimately involved in every detail of his creation - including your life?

? If God created and currently sustains the huge universe and also the tiny microscopic world, do you think he is too busy, or simply overlooks our human life sphere of existence?

? Is it possible that God is much bigger, more powerful, and more awesome than we previously thought before?

“Do you think you can explain the mystery of God? Do you think you can diagram God Almighty? God is far higher than you can imagine, far deeper than you can comprehend.”

I realize this chapter has been rather technical, but I believe it is necessary to help us return to a sense of awe about God and his involvement within our daily lives. In fact, not only is it helpful, but it is also one of God’s methods that he choose to use to achieve the same result. The Psalmist says, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds - then in the same breath, the very next verse says, “He counts the number of stars, he calls them all by name - Great is our Lord and mighty in power, his understanding is infinite!” (Psalm 147:3-5 NKJ) We need to look up and observe God’s awesome creative power and majesty; then with that in focus, realize then this same incredible God loves and cares personally for us.

And look at the stars, don’t it remind you just how feeble we are? Well it used to I guess.”

“So - who is like me? Who holds a candle to me? Says the Holy One, Look at the night skies, who do you think made all of this? Who marches this army of stars out each night, counts them off, counts each by name - so magnificent - so powerful - and never overlooks a single one?

Why would you ever complain, oh Jacob? Or whine Israel saying: “God has lost track of me - he doesn’t care what happens to me?” Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening? God doesn’t come and go, God lasts! He’s creator of all you can see or imagine. He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch his breath and he knows everything inside and out.” Isaiah 40:25-28

Could there anything be more clear? We first observe his greatness and majesty - then we humbly realize his care and concern for each of us. I remember the night I surrendered to God as a rebellious teenager. It was in May of 1976, a year out of high school, and I was still living a selfish, drug-crazed, hell-bent life which resisted any and all forms of authority, especially the ultimate - God. But through a series of divine maneuverings, God brought me to a place spiritually, of total despair and frustration where I had to decide one way or the other. Also, I was brought to a certain place which perfectly set the scene for this encounter. I was living in Columbus, Ohio, on the campus of Ohio State University. Nearby was a beautiful park with a small lake in it called, Mirror Lake. It was there on a beautiful clear starry night that I first encountered God transforming me as an adult. I vividly remember staring up into the night sky, filled with countless stars and thinking, the same awesome God who made these and keeps them today, also right now, cares for me, loves me, and came to Earth and died for me. I broke down and wept and repented for my life of sin and rebellion. It must have lasted two - three hours. I can’t recall all the words I spoke except one phrase kept repeating on my lips over and over: How can it be? How can it be?

I observed God’s awesome creation - then I also realized my lowly state and knew I needed forgiveness from the same God who not only runs the universe - but cares personally for every detail of my life! Years later while meditating on that day, I happened to be at another lake ,with guitar in hand and was inspired to write a song about it…here are the lyrics: (this song can be heard on a companion CD to this study - also called the Magnificent Mundane)

“He (God) designed the Big Dipper and Orion, the Pleiades and Alpha Centauri.”

Moving further into our study of the micro and the macro, within the larger context of the magnificent mundane, there is one biblical character who beautifully illustrates these principles for us - Abraham. Abraham is one of the best examples of this whole study. He was a man who…

Lived and practiced the presence of God within the every day existence of life, having awareness of the magnificent God amidst the mundane day to day living.

Without getting into detail about Abraham’s life, I will assume that you know a little about him. How he was called by God to leave his home and family and go to a place God would show him. Along the way, starting with the original call in Genesis 12, God made some incredible promises to this man. Abraham marks the beginning of God’s dealing differently with mankind. Before, it was through individuals, Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah and others.

But with Abraham, God makes it very clear that he wants Abraham to be the father of a multitude (what his name actually means) and all of who, like him, would simply believe God and walk in faith. In fact, all of us today who are believers are children of Abraham, he is the father of all who believe God. (I also personally believe that contrary to myth and a lot of bad jokes, believers won’t be greeted in heaven by St. Peter, but Abraham!) In the context of speaking of the multitude of Abraham’s children, God first tells Abraham to look up to the stars, and if he could count them, that’s how many descendants he will have (Genesis 15:5). This is the first time, besides the creation account, that God makes mention of the stars. But notice it’s not about how big or how hot they are, something Abraham would know little about, but of how many in number. This is something that even someone like Abraham could ponder four thousand years ago!

Abraham couldn’t come close to counting all the stars with his bare eyes on a clear night. In fact, we still can’t count them all with huge telescopes in space and the most advanced computers! There are simply so many stars it’s mind-boggling! We can’t even count all of the galaxies and each galaxy contains billions of stars! But again, God brings up the stars to Abraham…let’s continue.

When you think on these things, also ponder this: God is much bigger than any or all his creation. Take a moment to look up these verses:

In Genesis Chapter 22, Abraham displays his deep trust and faith in God by obeying him, and to even be willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. God of course stops him, and provides a ram for the sacrifice. Then right after this very symbolic event, probably with Abraham still with knife in hand and mouth open in amazement, God says that he will bless him and multiply his descendants “As the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore.” (Genesis 22:17 NKJ)

It is a good thing to contemplate the micro-macro - the small to the big - the sand to the stars? God links them together in scripture at least three times (Genesis 22:17, Jeremiah 33:22 and Hebrews 11:12) All three speaking also of either faith, righteousness, or both. Two of the three occasions is in context with Abraham, as I mentioned, the father of all who believe, my father, and hopefully yours. Yes, I believe it is very important and significant to notice this micro/macro link. It will help us to, like Abraham, have an awareness of a big God, who lives outside the box, it will help us to trust him more deeply and walk in childlike faith with a magnificent mundane mindset.

“In the fury of the moment I can see the master’s hand in every leaf that trembles, and in every grain of sand.”

“Forget even comparing stars to sand - to get a better picture of the cosmic universe - Galaxies are as plentiful as grains of sand on a beach!!”

There is one other scripture that also links these two worlds together in a similar fashion, only the sand is changed to dust. (which may be one and the same) In Daniel 12:2-3, it states,

“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the Earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt. Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those to turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever.”

If you look up all the scriptures on “sand” many of them refer to sand in speaking of vast multitudes of people and it’s always earthly in speaking of this life here and now. Stars however, speak of the righteous people of God, made righteous by their faith and trust in the righteous one - Jesus.

There is one scripture that speaks in a negative way about another kind of star- a wandering star - in speaking of apostates, those who have once tasted of God’s love and mercy but then for some reason turn their backs on him and being rebellious enemies, it says:

“They are clouds without water carried about by the winds, like autumn trees without fruit, twice dead pulled up by the roots, raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame, wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever. “ Jude 12, 13 NKJ

What are we to make of these things? Let me try to put it in perspective. In Genesis 2:7 it says, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground…” When we read about the creation account in the chapter before, Genesis One, God made the heavens and earth in six days and rested on the seventh. But we really don’t know if these “days” were actually 24 hour periods. I once thought so because of the repeated bible passage that states “There was evening and there was morning” for each day.

But I am discovering, with much of my previously dogmatic theology, now I am really only sure of the clearly revealed literal text of scripture - salvation by grace through faith - the resurrection - the second coming and a few others. It is possible that God, still created everything, but did it in a way in which things develop over a long period of time, and each “day” could be much longer than a 24 hour period?

First of all, I don’t believe in macro-evolution of the human species, from monkey to man, but I do believe in micro-evolution, where each species developed and evolved WITHIN their own species. God clearly created mankind apart from the animal world, but before that, the earth, the solar system, the galaxy and the entire universe could have started in a big bang (controlled expansion) with God creating it and setting it in motion, and developing it over a very long period of time. There are many physicists and cosmologists who believe so, including many Christian ones such as Hugh Ross.

If that is the case, then all the stars, the planets, and everything in them as matter, including you and me, all came from the same elements. In other words, Crosby Stills and Nash weren’t really wrong when in the song, “Woodstock” they sang “we are stardust.”

If this is true - I find it very interesting in light of the previously mentioned scriptures on sand - dust - stars.

We are made by God from the dust of the ground - stardust - we live our lives - then at some point return to dust or sand - physically - dust to dust - ashes to ashes. But we as believers also believe and know that our soul and spirits live on forever. We as Abraham’s children are both likened to sand - and stars, and as stated in Daniel 12:3,” the righteous shine as the stars forever.”

In summary, we are stardust, made from dust that formerly was a star - and we will return in that cycle from dust to like the shining stars in heaven by once again as Christ followers by grace. The next time you are outside on a beautiful starry night, hopefully these words can ignite a much deeper and bigger picture of some of God’s plan for you and me. But more on the theological in the next chapter, we still have some further technical points to ponder in the magnificent mindset.

Throughout the years I have often returned to the phrase “The universe is one thought of God.” when trying to put things in perspective, both in the macro size of the universe, and then in how much bigger our macro God is!

I can’t remember where I first heard it or read it, only that it has been with me for many years. I always thought it was just a good statement to grasp God’s bigness, but recently, with further study, I came to realize that it actually may be more true than I previously realized. A book I highly recommend is The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. It is not only a top-selling book , but it was also made into a special TV series on Nova.

The “Big Bang Theory” is almost not a theory anymore, but proven starting with Hubble who determined that all the galaxies are moving away and the entire universe is expanding. If you go backwards in time, everything would contract smaller and smaller to one highly condensed point.

“Everything astronomers can see stretching out to distances of 10 billion light years emerged from an infinitesimal speck.”

Now of course no one knows for sure if that is precisely how the universe began, although Hubble’s incredible discoveries would seem to indicate so if we reverse the clock to the beginning of all things. I personally have no problem with the theory. It doesn’t matter if God created the universe from a microscopic thought that expanded into the huge cosmos today, or created everything outright in six natural days. While it certainly does matter to believe in right, clear, theology and doctrine - for the issues that are clear – these issues are not. The Genesis-day theory has pros and cons from both sides. If you are dogmatic for one side - the other side can punch a lot of holes in your thesis no matter which side you’re on.

( I disagree with those who are “Theistic Evolutionists”, they believe that God created, then left it to evolve on its own. Einstein was close to this group and called God, “The Old One”, but never believed that he was a personal, involved, loving God who cares for each of us as seen all through scripture. I may fall more into the camp called, “ Progressive creationists”, who believe both in a creator God and a personal, involved God as revealed in scripture)

What really matters is that we know and believe that God did indeed create it, that we are not simply a product of chance, a cosmic fluke, and that this same God has and does reveal himself to us in our everyday mundane lives. He is all powerful, all knowing, perfect, holy and very personal and loving. He either is the God of the Bible or he isn’t. Jesus, who claimed to be this God, either is or isn’t! I believe he is, in fact, I have absolutely no doubt about it, but if you have not come to this same conclusion, I also remember the many years I thought differently as well

“500 years ago, Copernicus voiced the notion that there is nothing special about our place in the cosmos or the time in which we live. The Copernican Principle still holds today. It gives us the freedom to apply what we know about Earth, Sun and the Milky Way to application in the cosmos because we assume the laws of nature here are quite ordinary.”

Copernicus’s views were so controversial and certain to bring wrath upon him, probably death, by the Roman Catholic Church, that he delayed publishing his views until his latter years near his deathbed. Previously, the general consensus, which was promoted by the church, was that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around it!

Then later it was learned that the Earth is not the center, but the sun definitely is, still making our Earth and its place in the cosmos special. Of course, the process of discovery continued, and they learned that the sun is not the center of the universe, in fact, it is not even close to the center of our galaxy! Furthermore, our Milky Way Galaxy is not even special, it is one of hundreds of billions soaring through the universe, most of them in what is called clusters. Our own little clusters of galaxies is called, for lack of a better name, “The Local Group.“

Lucky for us it is an “average” star, if it were any bigger or smaller, none of us could live here on Earth. It may be quite average but it is exactly the right size.

“We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost between two spiral arms in the outskirts of a galaxy which is a member of a sparse cluster of galaxies; tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.” (He called Earth a dark blue dot.)

( Sagan was an atheist and I disagree with this view! Our earth is very special, although he was very correct that it is a tiny speck in a large ocean in context, and without an eternal perspective, this is the resulting view)

It is true that our Earth, our sun, and even our galaxy seem so insignificant when seen in context of the billions of others, yet our little earth is special because it is the planet where Jesus, who claimed to be almighty God, came and died for us, then rose from the dead. I already anticipate your thinking, “Why couldn’t Jesus have come and died - rose again also on countless other planets for countless other races of beings?” Well, that is a great question and one that would make sense when thinking of God’s great love and mercy. But there’s a snag - we who are Christ-followers are also called believers, and we believe not only in Jesus, but in everything he said, and everything that is written in the Bible along with all the other scriptures.

The idea of Christ possibly dying a thousand deaths elsewhere in the galaxy and universe cannot be true because of the scriptures. Firstly, all of the Bible is silent to even a hint of any possibility of it. And it goes even further in verses that would directly contradict any possibility of this idea. Here is one primary passage:

“…Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him.” (Romans 6:9) NKJ

Ok, so maybe after he died a thousand deaths elsewhere, this earth was just the last one - right? He died many times, but now no more. We must read the next verse for the answer…

“For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all “ (Romans 6:10) NKJ

Now we could still argue that he died once for all here on Earth, and did the same on billions of other worlds - it’s possible - but there is not even a hint of it in scripture and I seriously doubt it.

Again, this “once for all” phrase comes up in speaking of Christ’s death - resurrection in Hebrews 7:27 “…this he did once for all when he offered up himself.”

Our little blue speck of a planet actually is something very special, contrary to the Copernican principle, and , in fact, is more in line with another principle which I came up with called – “The Crucifixion Principle”. Because of the crucifixion principle, not only is the earth very special, but so are human beings, even if there is found to be millions of other inhabitable planets of alien beings. Even if that were soon found to be true as science continues to develop and see farther into space, it wouldn’t matter, our earth would still be the place where God himself visited and died, then rose for it’s inhabitants.

But there’s more proof of the special-ness of our earth in Scripture. Consider the first verse in the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth.” (Genesis 1:1) Why not just the heavens? Why single out the Earth as something special that was created along with the heavens - which most consider all of the created universe?

“Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…”

Once again, just like the beginning of the bible, here at the second to last chapter of the last book, we see the words heaven and earth together.

If the earth really is just a cosmic fluke in a galactic ocean of stars, then why does the inspired scriptures single it out apart from everything else?

These and other scriptures cause me to believe that our Earth is indeed special. It is special not because we humans are so advanced, or because this Earth happens to get everything just closest as the luckiest planet in the galaxy to spawn life, no. It is special because of the creator of the universe - God - takes special interest in it.

So special is God’s interest in earth, that when he created the universe, the Earth already was set apart as a unique place to accomplish God’s purpose. So special is God’s interest in the earth, that he himself had come to it and walked upon it many times….in the garden with Adam, meeting with Abraham and Moses. They he came down from his throne to be born as a little helpless baby in Bethlehem, grew up and lived his life as both fully man - fully God, then died on a cross for your sins and mine and three days later, rose from the dead! I spent some precious moments throughout Israel some years ago and walked the places Jesus walked, saw his birth place, and spent ten inspiring days in Jerusalem where not a day went by that I didn’t visit the actual place of his death and resurrection.

I also believe in the Crucifixion Principle, which overrules and goes beyond any other physical principle or limitation that exists on Earth or in the Cosmos. Because Jesus never was in bondage to sin and death, all those who follow him - by faith - also can walk in this newness of life and can literally know that although their bodies will die, their soul- spirit will live on forever with Christ. “For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” Romans 8:2 NKJ For instance this is precisely what Paul had in mind when comparing the two laws - the laws of sin and death -vs.- the law of the spirit of life in Christ. The law of sin and death is an unbreakable law that every person who ever lived or is alive today must submit to. Every person except the only one who was never enslaved to it because he was without sin - Jesus.

In other words, this law of God’s spirit overrides and makes the law of sin a death null and void. It’s a higher law, yet again, it must be taken by faith. But that shouldn’t surprise you, hopefully you have already received God’s grace by faith and are learning to walk in this new life of faith. Please stop for a moment and read Hebrews Chapter 11 to meditate on the importance of faith.

As we come to the conclusion of this chapter it is important to know and understand that God is the creator and sustainer of all the micro and all of the macro, and everything in between! Jesus made incredible statements that the almighty creator God notices when a sparrow falls. This same God has all of the hairs numbered on your head (some of us that number gets smaller each year). This same God also is involved in the macro cosmos and not only created and sustains the stars, but he has every one of them named! Nothing is too big, nothing is too small, to hard, too complex, too near, too far. God is in control of it all! That is a comforting thought to me. I recently saw and thoroughly enjoyed the move, “Bruce Almighty” where Jim Carrey gets to play God for a while. The mess that he makes is something we all can relate to and be very glad that God is the one in control!

One of the more deep, humorous and melodic Christian singer/songwriters these days, Chris Rice, has many thought-provoking songs on his “Smell the Color Nine” CD. It’s called “Questions” where he has a dream about going to heaven and finally asking God all the questions that he has been accumulating. Questions like, “What’s your favorite cartoon? Do our jokes make you laugh? Do you ever play tricks on the angels? What about quasars, feathers and why did you make so many stars?” Amid some of those silly, funny questions, the one about why God made so many stars is a question that probably every star gazer, and certainly every astronomer would like answered and consider it no laughing matter!

I looked up at a beautiful starry night sky just last night and wondered the same thing. All the while realizing that the thousand or so stars I could see with my naked eye, are just a tiny speck of a few stars around the outer arm of our Milky Way Galaxy. All of the stars just in our average sized galaxy is enough to blow anyone’s mind, but as I made clear earlier, our galaxy is comparatively speaking, just a bucket full of sand grains among a huge cosmic beach of billions and billions of galaxies each with billions and billions of stars!

Of course, no one has the correct answer to that question until God himself chooses to reveal it, but before I offer a possible explanation, have you ever wondered just how many stars there are out there? As I stated earlier, most astronomers believe there are many more stars in the universe than grains of sand on the Earth. But that is still hard to grasp because no one has ever counted all the grains of sand on the Earth!
Can’t anyone come up with some hard tangible numbers? Well recently one astronomer did just that! In the December, 2003 Discover Magazine there was a small article on astronomer Simon Driver at the Australian National University. Using two large telescopes with calculations on blue wave photon density, and focusing on the brightness of a sample strip of sky containing about 10,000 galaxies, Driver was able to come up with probably the most accurate number of stars to date, although he admits, there’s probably many more out there. Are you sitting down? He came up with 70,000 million million million stars - that a seven followed by 22 zeros. In other words - not millions not billions, but trillions and trillions and trillions or quadrillions and quadrillions of stars! So the question arrives once again…why did God make so many? Wouldn’t about a billion be enough? Maybe for you or me, but God choose to make a mind-boggling vast array for the only reason the scriptures reveal - for God’s glory.

“The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork.“ Psalm 19:1

“God’s glory is on tour in the skies. God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.”

David agrees with God and says: ‘Let your Glory be above all the Earth.”

Again, the Psalmist tells us to burst forth in praise to our God who both counts the stars and names them in Psalm 147:4, then in the next chapter beckons the sun, moon, and all the stars to give praise back (Psalm 148:3) Then again, “His glory is above the Earth and Heaven.” (Psalm 148:13)

I am fully aware of the scientific explanation of a large universe needed with many supernovas for life to exist on Earth - but it still doesn’t really answer why there are so many stars! A huge universe with many stars IS needed for our life on Earth - but not that many!

God made everything for his glory - you, me, all the Earth, the animals, and all the stars and galaxies. Everything an artist creates reflects something of the artist. If you look closely at a painting or piece of art you can glean insight into its creator. The same could be said for listening to a piece of music, no matter what the style, you can study that artist by their work. Let me quote a larger portion of Psalm 19 in the Message from as quoted a few moments ago:

“God’s glory is on tour in the skies - God craft on exhibit across the horizon, Madame day holds classes each morning, professor night lectures each evening. Their words aren’t heard their voices aren’t recorded but their silence fills the earth unspoken truth is spoken everywhere.” Psalm 19:3-4

Singer-songwriter-producer, John Elefante seems to have a grasp on these truths. On his first solo CD, Windows of Heaven, 1995, on his song “That’s Why God Made the Moon,” he says:

“That’s why God made the moon - for nights like these when we dream of all eternity.”

Then on his next CD, he still senses God’s presence but now more down to earth:

For whatever other specific reasons that God made so many stars we will never know in this life. But it is clear, in a general sense, they were all made for his glory, and to reveal something of his awesome character and sovereignty to us. It is on that final aspect - sovereignty - that I will conclude this chapter.

God is sovereign, God is awesome, everything in the cosmos fits and works in his plan.” Job 25:1

“…yet you God, are sovereign still, always and ever sovereign.” Psalm 102

“Science is a close friend of the theology of sovereignty.” Richard Swenson in his book, More than Meets the Eye.

God is the creator and sustainer of the micro to the macro and everything in between. God is sovereign, namely he rules over all and does whatever he pleases. He does not need to explain his methods or goals to us, he owes us no explanation on anything, owes us no kindness, love, grace or mercy. Yet he has shown us all those things and he has explained a great deal of his purpose and goals throughout the scriptures.

But in his sovereignty, he has also left some things out. Anything that we fill in between the words of scripture is considered conjecture and supposition- in simple terms, we‘re guessing! Through his sovereignty, he has ordered and set up all the laws of physics and the cycle of life that we experience on Earth.

I have shown how our world is vastly different from the original creation, when God said it was good. But yet it still reflects its designer. You and I also, although marred by sin’s curse, reflect our creator and have incredible worth being made in his image.

It was even through God’s sovereignty that sin’s curse came to all creation. God originally said that his creation was good - and at the end of the six days - very good! Creation is still good, though infected with sin, and should be cause for our wonder and inspiration and returning of praise to God as he will restore all things according to his plan.

“But ask the animals what they think - let them teach you; let the birds tell you what’s going on. Put your ear to Earth - learn the basics. Listen, the fish in the ocean will tell you their stories. Isn’t it clear that they all know and agree that God is sovereign, that he holds all things in his hands?” Job 12:7-8

Philip Yancey makes mention of God’s lecture on his creation to Job, when Job (and all of us) are waiting for a detailed explanation of why God allowed Job’s suffering.

Through his sovereignty, God chose not to directly answer Job’s questions. Job was wanting the answers from God, but God in essence said, “Look around you Job, stop talking, be still and know that I am God. I’m all around you every day.”

It is much the same for us today. To live in the Magnificent Mundane mindset, we must realize that we may never get the answers to our questions in this life. Many times our answers are only found by looking around at God’s creation and seeing God there. No, it is not Pantheism, it is simply letting God speak to us by whatever means he chooses through his sovereignty. God speaks through nature, through miracles, and through his word, and nature and miracles will never contradict his word.