The Vastness of Jesus' Creation
I was recently considering Colossians 1:15-20. in this incredible hymn of praise to Jesus Paul unloads many of Jesus' excellencies for us to consider. While considering this I found myself caught up in thoughts about Jesus' creative work. All things were created through Him. Creation is vast and complex and this should serve as a reminder of Jesus' vast power and majesty. There are so many things in the world that point to this, but consider these few and be in awe of Jesus with me...
As Paul is exalting the excellences of Jesus there is no doubt that He is in awe of Jesus’ power. The power to speak matter into being, something we can’t comprehend. The sheer vastness of creation should humble us before the might of Jesus.
To help us appreciate Jesus’ work in creation stop and consider the enormity of the universe that we live in. We live on a planet that we know to be fairly small in comparison to others, right? And yet the planet we live on is huge in many senses, isn’t it?
- Our tiny planet has depths that we have never traveled to in the ocean...
- Awe inspiring heights on great mountains...
- Canyons that will take our breath away...
- It also sustains an incalculable number of living organisms, 7 Billion humans, how many more animals, fish, birds, bacteria, germs?
As grand as our planet is, it is less than a speck in the universe.
I am sure you have heard before that in comparison to the sun we are tiny. We could fit 1.3 million planet earths inside the space of the sun. This again, just reminds us of how small we are. As I was thinking about this I came across a star named VY Cannis Majoris, which is the largest star we are aware of at this time. It is about 5,000 light years from here, but it’s size is mindboggling.
Let me put it into perspective…
- Earth has a circumference of about 25,000 miles, whereas VY Cannis Majoris has a circumference of 5.5 Billion miles.
- How many earths could we fill up VY Cannis Majoris with? 7 Quadrillion, which looks like this… 7,000,000,000,000,000.
- If you were to hop in your car and drive around the world at our equator moving at 100 mph it would take you roughly 10.5 days to make the full trip. Now if you were to hop in that same car and drive around the equator of VY Cannis Majoris, driving at 100 mph, it would take you 9,350.5 years!
My goal in telling you this is to convince you that VY Cannis Majoris is huge. Have I succeeded? I will pretend you all said, “Yes.” Now armed with that truth let me hit you with one better. Jesus made that. Jesus spoke and VY Cannis Majoris along with trillions upon trillions of other stars, planets, black holes, comets, and things we are not even aware of came into being!
Creation is huge, but the God who created it, Jesus, is bigger. This is the God who has made Himself known to us and wants to know us, and yet we find time in our lives to worry somehow. How is that exactly?
Let me add one more brief thought as I marvel at Jesus’ creative power. He has created something so big and so massive in the universe the only way we know how to quantify the universe is to call it infinite. Yet as big as the Universe is, as big as VY Cannis Majoris is, Jesus made everything out of building blocks that are so insanely small that the most powerful microscope can’t even behold them.
- We are made up of cells
- Our cells are built on molecules
- Our molecules make use of atoms
- Our atoms are mostly space, but the bits that are not space are called quarks.
As we dig down into this list we go beyond what is visible with the most powerful of microscopes. We know quarks exist through scientific tests, although we have never seen them. They are that small. The reality is that there could be something that makes up these quarks, but we have not gotten the far yet in dissecting creation.
Jesus made all of this. He built a universe so vast that the best we can do in quantifying is to say that it is infinite and He made it out of building blocks so microscopically tiny that we cannot physically see them. We only know they exist through mathematically reason.
Doesn’t this all astound you? Isn’t His power overwhelming? This is His creation. His words brought this beauty and complexity into being!
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