What the Telescope Found in Nothing

In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision that many of his colleagues called reckless. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny patch of sky that appeared completely empty — a sliver of darkness no larger than a grain of sand held at arm's length. He kept it focused there for ten consecutive days.

What came back silenced every critic.

That "empty" patch contained over three thousand galaxies. Not stars — galaxies, each one home to hundreds of billions of stars. In what we had dismissed as nothing, God had hidden more than the human mind could fathom.

We do this in our own lives, don't we? We look at certain people, certain places, certain seasons of struggle, and we see nothing of value. We pass quick judgment. We assume the patch of sky we're staring at is empty.

But the Psalmist understood what Hubble confirmed: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands" (Psalm 19:1). Every direction we look, there is more of the Almighty's handiwork than we could catalog in a thousand lifetimes.

Humility begins right here — in the honest admission that our vision is small. We see a grain of sand's worth of sky and call it everything. The Most High sees it all. The posture that befits a creature standing before that kind of Creator is not confidence in what we know, but awe at how much we don't.