I saw four Galilean moons circle Jupiter

When I was around 10 years old, my parents bought me a telescope. Although my major adult interests would be in the social sciences, arts and humanities, as a child I had a pronounced affinity for astronomy. Something about those bright celestial objects easily fired the imagination of a schoolboy.

Two years after my birth, the Soviets had put the Sputnik satellite in orbit around the earth. Shortly thereafter, the United States began its own space programme, sending astronauts into earth orbit and, eventually, all the way to the moon. Then the original Star Trek series aired on television, holding out the prospect of travelling into “space, the final frontier.”

I collected a small library on the subject, trying to memorize the constellations and to identify them in the night sky. During the wee hours of the morning, my ever so patient mother would get up with me and join me as I set up my telescope and attempted to view the moon, the planets, and the stars from our suburban front garden.

I distinctly remember viewing the four Galilean moons circling Jupiter and the arid surface of our own moon as it reflected the sun’s light. The rings of Saturn eluded me, as they were parallel to earth’s line of sight at that time and thus invisible. I recall my frustration at having to move the telescope as the earth’s rotation made it impossible to focus on distant objects for any length of time.

Set in place

But then I would get scared. Well, maybe scared isn’t quite the word. Perhaps overwhelmed. As I pursued my interest in the stars, I became aware of the sheer immensity of the cosmos. At some point I would find it all unnerving. I would have to step back, return to earth, metaphorically speaking, and pursue another interest, such as sketching, music or historical atlases – something that didn’t make me feel quite so small and insignificant.

Many people today look at earth’s tiny size relative to the vastness of the universe and assume that there couldn’t possibly be a God who cares for it in a special way. We’re not even in the centre of the solar system, and the solar system itself is at the edge of our galaxy.

But the psalmist got there first: “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?” (ESV)

So many of us can testify to God’s care in our own lives, a care manifested most wonderfully in his sending the Son of Man to atone for the sins of his people residing in so small a corner of the cosmos.