Daily Devotional - January 6

Cosmology

Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Jeremiah compared the future descendants of Israel, “… as countless as the stars of the sky and as measureless as the sand on the seashore” (Jeremiah 33:22). Jeremiah was explaining that Jews would become so widely dispersed around the earth that no census could count them, just as all the stars in the universe or grains of sand upon the earth could never be counted. Yet in his day, all the visible stars could be counted. At that time, 600 B.C., early astronomers counted about 3,000 stars in the night sky. It was not until the 20th century that astronomy affirmed that the stars were indeed countless by humans.

The Hubble telescope captured a long time-lapsed image in a seemingly dark part of the universe near the Big Dipper. The area they photographed would be equivalent to our standing on earth and holding a grain of sand at arm’s length. When this image was compiled, this completely dark region was found to contain more than 10,000 galaxies, with each galaxy containing an estimated 100 billion stars (Hubble Ultra-Deep Field). Now imagine grains of sand covering the night sky and behind each grain being more than 10,000 galaxies, each containing 100 billion stars! What an immense number of stars. Truly the numbers of stars are as countless as the sands on the seashore! Our minds can hardly grasp the multitude of stars! Today it is estimated that there are roughly 1024 (10 followed by 24 zeros) stars. And the Jewish descendants are indeed scattered around the globe in numbers so large that no census can count them all. When God speaks on science, what he has to say is absolutely accurate. Should that be any surprise? After all, He’s the one who made science!

The heavens declare the Glory of God.

~ Psalm 19:1a

Source: "Pearls in Paradise" by authors Bruce Malone and Jule Von Vett