The Unknown

If you go outside on a dark night, in the darkest places on Earth, you might see as many as 9,000 stars. They look like tiny points of light, but they are massive fireballs. And while it seems like we are observing an astonishing expanse, we can only see a tiny fraction of all the stars in our galaxy, let alone the universe.

“The beautiful challenge of stargazing is keeping this all in mind: Every small thing we see in the night sky is immense, but what’s even more immense is the unseen, the unknown.” ~Brian Resnick from VOX

Think about that feeling — the awesome, terrifying feeling of smallness. Meditate on the extreme contrast of the big and small.

It turns out all the stars in all the galaxies, in all the universe, barely even begin to account for all the stuff of the universe. Most of the matter in the universe is actually unseeable, untouchable, and, to this day, undiscovered.

Scientists call this unexplained stuff “dark matter,” and they believe there’s five times more of it in the universe than normal matter — the stuff that makes up you and me, stars, planets, black holes, and everything we can see in the night sky or touch here on Earth. It’s skins of backwards to even call that “normal” matter, because in the grand scheme of the cosmos, normal matter is the rare stuff. But to this day, no one knows what dark matter actually is.

I only bring up dark matter as a reminder that whatever we know, whatever truth about the universe we have acquired as individuals or as a society, is insignificant compared to what we have not yet explained. It’s one of those things that makes us feel super insignificant, like a tiny, tiny speck in the universe equipped with 3 pounds brain to some how try to contemplate it all! In a paraphrase of Neil Degrass Tyson- “if the universe makes you feel small- GOOD! Maybe that feeling will remind us that we are not the center of the universe and nothing revolves around us!” There’s something freeing about that. But we are part of God’s immense, ever expanding, unfathomable creation… While humanity is tiny in comparison, we are significant in our unique role. We reflect God’s own image in a way that nothing else does. I’m humbled and honored with the knowledge that although the universe doesn’t revolve around me- God’s heart does.

“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers,

The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him,

And the son of man that You visit him? You have made him a little lower than the angels,

And You have crowned him with glory and honor.

You have made him to have dominion over the works of Your hands;You have put all things under his feet,All sheep and oxen—Even the beasts of the field,The birds of the air,

And the fish of the seaThat pass through the paths of the seas.

O Lord, our Lord,How excellent is Your name in all the earth!” ~Psalms 8:3-9