Evening Service

My husband, Jim, and I teach a one-to-one discipleship course to train believers in the faith. One of the early lessons is entitled “Worship”. The last question in this chapter reads, “How do you worship God?” Every time I take someone through the book, I add to my list. Among others, it now includes such worship expressions as singing, praying, giving, serving, playing an instrument, dancing before the Lord, composing music, simply being silent before God, and meditating on scripture in a worshipful manner.

But last month God gave me a new venue for worship that took me by surprise. My daughter, Annika, showed me a short DVD put out by Answers in Genesis entitled “Created Cosmos”. It simply declares the glory of God by probing the vastness of the universe, taking you on a hypothetical journey through space, projecting what it might be like to travel light years away in seconds. As you “look back” in the direction of the Milky Way from the nearest star outside our galaxy, you find that our sun only appears as a tiny dot, and our own world is entirely invisible to the naked eye. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so small as I did while taking all of this in.

Just tonight we concluded a week-long Vacation Bible School at church. The theme for the week? Space. Each night, the kids learned new far out facts about the universe.
Hearing about how massive other planets are, or how intensely cold or hot they are, or being reminded of the fact that scientists have yet to find life on other planets, has caused me yet again to be amazed by the uniqueness of earth, so suitable for humans. Here we are amply supplied with air to breathe, food to eat, and water to drink. Our earth-home to every human being- is full of beautiful places – mountains, beaches, plains, jungles. Our bodies adjust to various places on our earth, but we could not survive for a second on any other known planet without bringing our own air, food, drink, and creature comforts.

Genesis 1:16 states that God made the lesser light to rule the night and the greater light to rule the day. The verse ends with two words. In Latin they are “et stellae”, meaning “and the stars”. That’s all the press God gives this astronomical display of His power. He simply spoke them into being, and they existed. And this is the same God who carefully formed man from the dust of the ground, and knit me together in my mother’s womb, whose thoughts toward me are as the sand of the sea, and who knows my words before I speak them. As the Psalmist declares in Psalm 139, “Such knowledge is too wonderful to me. It is high, I can’t grasp it.” In Psalm 19, He says, “The heavens declare the glory of God. The skies proclaim the work of His hands.” In Psalm 8, he says, “When I consider the heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have ordained, what is man, that you are mindful of him..?” It simply boggles the mind. As Chris Tomlin so aptly puts it, our God – who calls the stars by name - is “indescribable”.

My point here is this. Studying the stars leads me to worship. Just contemplating the creation here on earth can cause you to think great thoughts of God, but peering into the enormity of space and all it contains should bring us to our knees in awe-filled praise. So here’s my challenge to you. The next time you watch the Discovery channel, or visit the planetarium on your child’s field trip, or help him study for that astronomy quiz, or just take a walk and look up into the night sky, take a moment to bow before the Lord of all creation, the God of Wonders. Be amazed and give Him glory.