A couple of weeks ago, NASA released the largest photo ever taken. The picture is of the Andromeda galaxy, which is the closest galaxy to ours. There are so many obvious reasons why this is super cool: the 1.5 billion pixel image shows over 100 million stars and travels more than 40,000 light years. One picture has captured a piece of a great vastness of the unknown that we can never even begin to fathom.
The greatness of our universe continually blows my mind, and reminds me of how small my problems are. But in reality, the universe and all it’s wonders are nothing compared to the God who is Master of it all. Looking at this picture proved to me that God isn’t just “big.”
Skyscrapers are big. Bodybuilders are big. Great Danes are big. God is so much more beyond the word big that it doesn’t even seem right to give Him that word. God’s vastness encompasses everything that ever was. And the crazy thing is that this God who created it all actually CARES about who we are and what we do. It doesn’t make sense. There are so many great beauties in the universe, like planets that are bigger than our sun, or stars that are bigger than our solar system. Why would a God so great care about people so small?
How truly great His love is for a people so small
God, who is Love, created us to love Him back. He made us in His image and likeness so that we can have the ability to choose to love Him. He made us so small and insignificant because the love He gave us is truly the greatest power in this massive universe. Out of all the stars burning brightly, we are the ones who hold the most glorious power.
Sometimes I ask God why He made the universe the way He did. There are galaxies and planets and stars that man will never see, and man had not even discovered much of what we can see now until fairly recent years. Why then go through all the trouble of making it all? And I hear Him in my heart telling me that He created all of this to show us how truly great His love is for a people so small. It takes an infinite amount of love to care about a people who are inconsequential in this great universe.
God loved us so much that He became a man to die for our sins. Think about it. This God who is so great and vast chose to become a man because of the love he had for us. The greatest thing there ever was or ever will be lowered himself in such a way as to become one of the smallest things in existence. And not only that, but he comes to us in bread and wine every day at Mass! Our God is a God of such great love!
“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?” Psalm 8:3-4
Ask God to show you how great He is, and thank Him for the Cross.