Our Galaxy

Let this idea float around in your mind: Our earth, our sun, our entire solar system lies like a speck of dust on a shining plate. The plate slowly spins, floating on the vast sea of space. Innumerable plates share that vast sea, lying at unimaginable distances from ours.

We think we’re so important. Activities, families, friends fill our lives with significance, we think. But let that shining plate and that dust speck work in your mind. Among all the galaxies, who could pick one to be more interesting or important than any other? And if someone did, would he notice one little speck within all its glittering worlds?

Well, yes. One did chose this galaxy and notice this solar system and pinpoint this earth. But it happened in the reverse order. God created the earth first. He created it to be inhabited, the Scriptures say. And he spread out the heavens around it, the scriptures say, for the benefit of those inhabitants. For an explanation of how that might have appeared as it was happening, and the mechanism involved, I recommend a wonderful little book called Starlight & Time: Solving the Puzzle of Distant Starlight in a Young Universe by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D. (1994, Master Books, Inc.).

For an inspiring look at our galaxy, watch the time lapse video by William Castleman of the night sky passing over the 2009 Texas Star Party in Fort Davis, Texas. The galactic core is awesome.