I've had a few encounters with stars within the past few days. The story of Abraham and the promise that his descendants would outnumber the stars. I read a Shakespearean sonnet that referenced them. And I'm watching a BBC program called Hyperspace, billed as covering "From the beginning of the universe to the end of our world" and these have gotten me thinking...
When I read the story of Abraham, I'm never really impressed that his descendants will out number the stars - out numbering the sands astounds me - but not so much the stars. And Shakespeare talks about the number and beauty of them... ehh. Don't get me wrong, they are amazing and I love gazing at them, but... And then I remember:
I'm not saying that the stars themselves are different, but our planet has gotten so visually loud that we see so many fewer stars than they did. Consider this:
This is basically what we see now:
Imagine seeing this:
I was driving across Wyoming (not many people can start a sentence that way!), it was night, the highway was empty (anyone surprised?), the land was so flat I could see the horizon as though I was at sea. Wyoming doesn't believe in streetlights. I had a realization. I pulled my car over, turned off the lights, climbed up on the hood, leaned back on the windshield and marvelled! Suddenly I understood the promise to Abraham. I saw the majesty Shakespeare attempted to capture in words. I'd never seen the night sky so filled with stars.
Which brings me to my other thought: Hyperspace has been using some fairly ironic words. Obviously this BBC production isn't acknowledging the existence of God and yet they are using such words as "creation" and talking about things being "brought into existence."
The first episode mentions "the beginning of time" and takes us back to the Big Bang. Of course, most of us know that scientists generally agree that time existed before the Big Bang, we just have no way of knowing what was there. That was just something that made me go "huh?"
Anyway, the episode talks about how everything that is was "created" by stars. The only element that existed during the Big Bang was hydrogen, that became stars that became denser and created helium, oxygen, calcium, etc all the way to lead as the star died. Dying stars spewed their "star stuff" that became planets and the super nova-ing stars created black holes. All I could picture is God watching this thinking, "I know! Isn't is so stinking cool?! Doesn't it just blow your mind what I came up with! I'm so proud of you that you figured it all out. I love this stuff too!"
To bring this post together, Hyperspace gave a statistic: For every grain of sand on earth there are 1 million stars in the universe. I guess I need to swap which promise to Abraham amazes me!
I will continue to be astonished by the beauty and creativity of the stars.
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