Ten Thousand Galaxies in the Dark

In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision his colleagues thought was reckless. He pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny patch of sky near the Big Dipper — a spot that appeared completely empty — and left the shutter open for ten consecutive days. It was the most powerful telescope ever built, and he aimed it at nothing.

The images that came back silenced every critic. That blank speck of sky, no larger than a grain of sand held at arm's length, contained over ten thousand galaxies. Each galaxy held billions of stars. What looked like darkness was teeming with light too distant for the naked eye to perceive.

Faith works like that long exposure. When we look at our circumstances — the diagnosis, the fractured relationship, the prayer that seems to echo off the ceiling — we see darkness. Nothing there. And everything in us wants to close the shutter and point our attention somewhere more promising.

But the writer of Hebrews tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Faith holds the lens steady on what appears empty and trusts that the God who flung ten thousand galaxies into a single grain of sky has not left your dark patch barren either.

The light is there. Keep the shutter open.