What the Empty Space Held

In 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision that his colleagues thought was reckless. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny patch of sky near the Big Dipper — a patch that appeared completely empty. No stars, no galaxies, nothing. He devoted a hundred hours of precious telescope time to staring at what looked like darkness.

The result stunned the world. That seemingly empty speck of sky — no bigger than a grain of sand held at arm's length — contained over three thousand galaxies, each home to hundreds of billions of stars. The Hubble Deep Field image revealed that what looked like nothing was, in fact, unimaginably full.

Faith works like this. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." There are seasons when we aim our hearts toward God and see nothing — no answers, no movement, no light. The diagnosis hasn't changed. The prodigal hasn't come home. The grief hasn't lifted. And the people around us wonder why we keep looking.

But the God who packed three thousand galaxies into a single dark speck of sky is the same God who is working in the spaces that look empty to us. El Roi — the God Who Sees — is never absent from the places where we see nothing.

Keep pointing your heart toward the darkness. What looks empty to you is full of more than you can imagine.