What God Sees in the Empty Space

In 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision his colleagues called reckless. He pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny patch of sky that appeared completely blank — a dark square no bigger than a grain of sand held at arm's length. For ten consecutive days, the telescope gathered light from that seemingly empty void.

When the image developed, the scientific world gasped. That "empty" patch contained over three thousand galaxies, each home to hundreds of billions of stars. What looked like nothing was one of the most densely populated regions of the observable universe.

Some of you walked in here today feeling like that patch of sky — overlooked, unremarkable, maybe even empty. The world has glanced your direction and seen nothing worth noticing. Perhaps you have started to believe it yourself.

But the God who spoke those galaxies into existence is the same God who looks at you and sees something the naked eye will never catch. He who calls the stars by name has called you by yours. He who filled that dark square with three thousand galaxies has filled you with purpose, gifting, and a destiny that would take more than ten days of careful looking to fully comprehend.

Your identity was never meant to be determined by who notices you. It was settled by the One who made you — and El Roi, the God Who Sees, has never looked your way and found nothing there.