Like the Stars in the Sky

I’m not sure what’s more astonishing: the magnificence of the universe … or our ability to be oblivious to it. I mean, when was the last time you thought about the sun? Except for deciding whether to grab a jacket, you probably don’t.

Did you know that the sun is so large that you can fit 1.3 million earths inside of it. The sun doesn’t seem that big because it’s 93 million miles away from us. To wrap your head around how far that is, think of one mile as the thickness of a piece of paper. At that scale, the distance between earth and the sun would be a stack of paper 70 miles high!

And our sun is just one star in a universe filled with them. The tiny fraction of the sky we can observe is home to an estimated one billion trillion stars. That’s the number 1 with 22 zeros after it.

Even right here on earth, we’re surrounded by the wonders of creation. Mount Everest is as high as 20 Empire State Buildings. And you’d need 25 to reach the deepest part of the ocean.

I could go on, but I think you see how easy it is to miss the wonders of the universe … even when you’re surrounded by it.

That’s true about many other wonders of life as well. The sacred union of a couple in marriage. The miracle of a newborn baby. The profound meaning to be discovered in suffering, in love, and in faith.

To see the wonders of life, sometimes you have to stop … and open your eyes to it all.