However, as it is written: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” -1 Corinthians 2:9

When I was a kid, we used to flee the hot summers of Texas and drive 12 hours to Colorado. Now, that is a long time to be in a car with your parents, two sisters, and a German Shepherd named King. And I remember on these seemingly interminable trips how you could begin to see the mountains in the distance. You can see Pike’s Peak sometimes almost 100 miles before you get to it. So we’d spot the mountain and then drive what seemed like forever to get to it.

Now when I look at images of the universe, I get that same feeling of “are we there yet?” that I used to get as a kid in the backseat. The amazing views of Eagle Nebula M16, dubbed Pillars of Creation, is an example. They remind many of stalagmites in a cave, but to me they resemble natural monuments in the desert, shaped by eons of wind and rain.

Here is the amazing part: the longest cloud in the Pillars of Creation is one light year long. And they are 7000 light years away. The images we see are not what these clouds look like now, but how they looked when Noah was building his ark. And if we were to build the fastest rocket ship possible and started at one end of the cloud, using the best technology available, it would take us 20,000 years to travel the distance of that cloud. So, if you started to travel the length of the cloud when Jesus was a kid, you’d now be just over 2000 years old and one-tenth of the way to your destination.

And it doesn’t stop there. This is just one cloud in our galaxy, which is about 100,000 light years across. Our galaxy is one of millions in the known universe. And the farthest stars we can see are 13 billion light years away. And that’s just the known universe. We are beginning to see evidence of other dimensions beyond space and time.

So it looks like Paul was right. There is truly no way we can conceive what God has created. Our job is to ask questions. . .and to be amazed.