One fine, clear night not too long ago, in a place relatively free of the distractions of city lights, I found myself gazing up into the starlit heavens and being absolutely awestruck by the beauty and the grandeur of the universe.  

 

I thought of the words of the shepherd David, who, looking at the heavens above and exclaimed, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8).

 

And what did I do then, but take my trusty Google phone out of my pocket, point it to the sky, and proceed to read the names of the stars and
constellations I happened to be looking at. (There’s an app for that!)

 

I am told that one can see 1029 stars with the naked eye. We don’t always appreciate how far apart those stars are.  

 

If I had a sheet of paper and drew a little circle to represent the earth, and on the same sheet moved over about nine inches and drew another circle as the Sun, that nine inches would represent about 90 million miles.

 

 Now using this same scale, how far would I have to go to draw the nearest star, Alpha Centauri?  

 

Believe it or not, to keep the same scale, I would have to keep rolling out paper and walk about 40 miles!  The nearest star is 24,000 billion miles away.

 

Pondering the immensity of the universe can’t help but make us aware of our own comparative insignificance. The story is told that Franklin D. Roosevelt and one of his advisors talked late into the night one evening at the White House.  

 

They were talking about geopolitics in the corridor of power – some pretty heady stuff.

 

At last, President Roosevelt suggested that they go out into the Rose Garden and look at the stars before going to bed.  

 

They went out and looked up for several minutes, peering at nebulae with thousands of stars.  Then the president said, “All right, I think we feel small enough now to go in and go to sleep.”

 

The smallness and insignificance of humanity has led many people to despair, feeling alone and abandoned in the immense universe.  

 

Looking up into the sky, they see nothing beyond the stars, no intelligent designer, no God with whom to have a relationship.  

 

They despair at ever finding meaning or purpose, other than what they themselves can manufacture.

 

David, too, was at first struck by the apparent insignificance of humanity:  “Lord, when I consider 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…?”

 

But as David thought about it, he came to a far different conclusion about God and humanity; he sets forth the biblical understanding not only of how great God is, but how important we are in the scheme of things:

 

“You made man little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.  You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet.”

 

Imagine this! We are the very climax of God’s creation, and he has crowned us with glory and honor.  

 

God has made us co-creators with him, giving us a share in his work and making us instruments of his redemptive purpose.  He has made us stewards over all he has made.  

 

We are to be nothing less than the expression of the character and the being of the living God in creation; we bear his image.  In God’s eyes, we are of infinite value, worthy of God’s constant consideration and care.

 

Maybe we are significant after all, in the grand scheme of things. This is what I choose to believe.

 

Next time you feeling down on yourself, thinking you are insignificant and worthless, alone in the universe, read Psalm 8 and lift up your head.

 

You are made in his image, crowned with glory and honor.  And God cares for you more than you know.