The Bible begins at the beginning. It tells us how it all got started. Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Many Hebrew scholars recognize that the phrase “the heavens and the earth” is a figure of speech known as a merism. It means everything “there” and everything “here,” including everything in between. It’s like John referring to Jesus as the Alpha and the Omega. He does not only sum up the first and the last letters of the Greek alphabet, he is also everything in between.
Genesis with the heavens, everything out there. With Telescopes, we have learned a lot about “everything out there.” Our galaxy contains more than 100 billion stars. Our sun is 150 trillion miles from the center of our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of a small cluster of 19 galaxies, the nearest of which is 30 million light years from us (150 million trillion miles – Got a yardstick?). There are more than a billion galaxies. The number of stars in these galaxies is close to 100 quintillion. Betelgeuse, the star, not the movie, is the largest in the universe. Its estimated circumference is four times the size of the Earth’s orbit around the sun! There has been much discussion lately about the existence of “intelligent life out there.” I don’t believe there is, personally, but that gets me in trouble. But even if there is intelligent life out there, it doesn’t change the fact that God created it all. But, there isn’t. God made the heavens and the earth for us. Man, he created in the image of God.
With microscopes, we have learned that of the things “here,” there exists a multitude of things invisible, which is just as vast and just as complex. It is even more remarkable than what we see through the telescope. We have discovered DNA, which enables us to identify every human person from a pool of billions. We know about cells and how they split. There are even smaller things than the Amoeba. Mathematicians have discovered things that we cannot see even with the microscope, like the atom and its protons and electrons. My point is that whether we look upon the sun (positively charged), holding the planets (negatively charged), or whether we examine the nucleus (positively charged) at the heart of the atom, holding each electron (negatively charged) in its sway, we sense the wisdom, power, and grandeur of God. In the light of all this, we bow before our Creator in awe and genuine dedication and pour out worship, adoration, thanksgiving, and unrestrained praise. It’s not only the heavens that declare the glory of God, but the earth as well.