And He Made the Stars Also

There was once a time in my life, as an unbeliever, when I turned to the realm of science fiction in an attempt to quell the restlessness of my heart. Having been made in God’s image, eternity was stitched into my soul; and in denying Him for so long a time, I retreated to what I sensed was the next biggest thing to fill that infinite expanse—namely, the vast, mysterious enormity of the cosmos. Like the pagans of old, I looked to the stars for what only the One true God could provide.

No matter how many times you may have stopped short of completing your Bible-in-a-year reading plan, doubtless by this point you have familiarized yourself well enough with Scripture’s opening chapter.

“In the beginning” of history (Genesis 1:1), we read how God made the heavens and the earth, and everything in them. To shed light on His new creation, God said, “Let there be light”—and behold, “there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Notice that we are still in the first few verses of Genesis 1—that is, day one of creation—and yet somehow there is already light. The sun, moon, and stars won’t be formed until day four.

God Himself, “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17), is the ultimate source of light across what is seemingly an infinite, unending universe. In both his Gospel and his letters, John is fond of saying as much: “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). God has no need of the light issuing forth from the heavenly bodies which His own hands have made from nothing. For, from whom did the sun and stars learn to shine if not Him? Indeed, as it will be in the end, so it was in the beginning—“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23).

When I was a new Christian, I remember hearing a sermon by Louie Giglio on the opening verses of Genesis 1, with a particular focus on God’s declaration, “Let there be light.” “Light travels at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second, or 186,282 miles per second,” Giglio began. “When God said, ‘Let there be light’ in the beginning, light came bursting out of His mouth at 186,282 miles per second across the universe!” A striking image, to be sure—but one I draw issue with (no offence to Louie Giglio!). For indeed, the reality is far more striking.

The ex nihilo creation of the universe in Genesis—Latin for “Out of nothing”—was a miraculous act of divine creation. It had everything to do with God’s creative abilities as God and nothing to do, as Giglio supposes, with the natural laws of physics. God may use physics and calculus and chemistry as a means of maintaining the universe, but he did not use these means to create it. The laws which govern the universe and the universe itself are both likewise creations of God. And in either case, the Word of God is the chief agent of creation. As Hebrews 1:3 says, “[the Son] upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Like the resurrection of our Lord, creation is a supernatural miracle with no natural explanation.

All the same, let’s do some math. Conservative estimates place the observable universe at around 93 billion light-years across. Despite the name, a light-year is actually not a measure of time, but rather one of distance. Namely, the total distance a beam of light travels through empty space over the course of one Earth year.

A little confusing at first, I know. We are, after all, talking about astronomically large distances that we have no hope of truly comprehending. Perhaps it would be helpful to think of the universe as, say, the United States of America. A light-year can then be thought of as a mile. Just as the United States is around 2,800 miles coast-to-coast, the universe is about 93 billion light-years from end to end.

A single beam of light, or photon, travelling at the incomprehensible speed of 186,282 miles per second—for an entire year!—works out to a single light-year, which is itself about 5.88 trillion miles total. To cross the observable universe, you’d need roughly 93 billion of those (that’s 5.88 trillion miles multiplied by 93 billion).

And, upon reaching your destination on the other side of the cosmos, you will still have quite the journey ahead of you, given that the term “observable universe” means just that—observable, what we can determine the limits of, with no idea of what lies beyond. This is complicated by the fact that the universe is expanding at its borders faster than the speed of light itself, meaning, on this side of eternity, and perhaps even hereafter, we will never be able to peek behind the curtain of what God has made in its breathtaking, nigh-unending totality. Imagine leaving the state of Maine for Washington only to discover, upon nearly reaching the Pacific Ocean coastline, that there is a whole lot of Washington left.

That is why I draw issue with Louie Giglio’s interpretation of “Let there be light” in Genesis 1:3. Had those words merely left the lips of God at the speed of light, fast as it is, only an infinitesimally small distance of the universe would have been traversed since its formation. Indeed, the vast majority of the cosmos would still be cloaked in a deep darkness had God’s words been constrained by the limits of natural physics, rather than having been let loose by the glory of His divine power, blanketing all of creation in a single bound.

It is shortly after this point in Genesis, on day four, that God calls into being the heavenly host, “which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy” (Psalm 19:5). Only after the universe has basked in the light and warmth of the glory of God for several days do the lesser lights, drawing from His example, then begin to shine. In Genesis 1:18, we read how “God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also.” The sun and the moon aren’t even so much as named in this passage, and the stars are something of a passing, almost nonchalant mention. The English Standard Version renders the creation of the stars with even fewer words: “And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.”

Ancient pagans often credited the sun, moon, and stars with controlling human destiny. Indeed, the heavenly bodies were routinely numbered among the gods which these ancient cultures worshipped. In a single phrase, and hardly at that, God disarms any and every pagan infatuation with the heavenly bodies by at once dismissing the significance of their creation—“and the stars”—while also claiming complete authority for their creation.

Make no mistake, the stars are utterly glorious, both in magnitude and in sheer number. But their Maker, the Lord God Almighty, is infinitely more glorious still. It costs Him nothing to create everything. No more effort is required from God to fill the universe with innumerable stars than is needed from Him to ruffle a leaf with a stiff breeze—both acts are utterly effortless for Him.

The pagan cultures of old weren’t fools for admiring the stars; they were fools for stopping at the stars in their admiration. As with everything in creation, the stars, brilliant as they may be, are not meant to shed light upon themselves. Rather, their duty is to reflect the glory of their Creator “who is forever blessed”—“they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25).

The proper response to the overwhelming glory of nature is to look further still, as David did, to God Himself:

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:3-4).

Unlike those of us who live in the modern age, King David did not have the benefit of sophisticated technology like radio telescopes to poke and prod the mysteries of God’s creation. Did you know that there are such monstrous stars out there in the deep darkness whose breadth is farther across than our planet’s very orbit around the sun? Have you not heard—have you not been told!—that the only reason there seems to be black nothingness beyond and between stars in the night sky is because the light from stars much further still has not yet reached us? Given enough time, the night sky would be an impenetrable wall of brilliant light, not unlike a dense forest which you cannot see through on account of tree after tree blocking your view after only a short distance. The universe is a vast, uncharted sea of trillions upon trillions of galaxies, each teeming with countless stars, so much so that they far outnumber the grains of sand to be found on Earth. How’s that for a striking image?

And yet, with nothing but his naked eye, a clear night sky, knowledge of God’s word, and the Spirit of God groaning within him, David gathered everything he needed to know about his place in the universe. He did not elevate himself, as the prideful do; nor did he elevate nature, as the pagans do; nor did David suppose, in light of the overwhelming size of the universe, that he must therefore be inconsequential, as the atheist and nihilist conclude. No—David let God be God, delighting in the unfathomable mystery that such a God would be mindful, much less loving, of him—of you, and of me.

I began by saying that, when I was an unbeliever, I retreated to science fiction in an effort to understand the mysteries of the universe. Before I came to know Christ, I long looked to the stars with thoughts of what might lie beyond them. Then later, as a believer, I looked towards them once more, only now with longing for the One who most certainly rules and reigns behind them.

Stars now mark the pathway which leads towards home and Him. Like pinholes in the floor of Heaven itself, each star pours forth speech and light in praise of their Maker; speech that I can not only hear, but now understand; light that I can not only see, but now savor. In and out of season, careless of whether a fleeting cloud should dampen their beauty now and again from our sight, the stars continue to shine, reminding us that “the Shadow [is] only a small and passing thing”—that the true Light yet shines in the darkness, and the darkness will never overcome Him.

“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

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Photo by Steve Gribble, Unsplash

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