A Grain of Sand Full of Galaxies

In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a controversial decision. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, he pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny, seemingly empty patch of sky near the Big Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major. The target area was no larger than a grain of sand held at arm's length. Many colleagues called it a waste of precious telescope time. Over ten days, from December 18 to 28, Hubble collected 342 separate exposures of that dark little speck.

When the images were assembled, the scientific community fell silent. That pinpoint of apparent emptiness contained approximately three thousand galaxies, each one home to hundreds of billions of stars. Some of those galaxies were more than ten billion light-years away, their ancient light only just reaching the telescope's mirror. And this was just one tiny fragment of the night sky.

The prophet Isaiah invited God's weary people to do something remarkably similar to what Williams did — to look up. "Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name" (Isaiah 40:26).

Three thousand galaxies in a grain of sand — and the God who flung them there knows each one by name. If the Almighty tracks every star across ten billion light-years of space, He has not lost track of you.