When the Shutter Stays Open

In 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision his colleagues thought was reckless. He pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny patch of sky that appeared completely empty — a dark sliver no bigger than a grain of sand held at arm's length — and left the shutter open for ten consecutive days. Many thought he was wasting millions of dollars of telescope time on nothing.

What came back changed astronomy forever. That "empty" patch of darkness contained over three thousand galaxies, each home to hundreds of billions of stars. Light that had been traveling for over ten billion years finally reached the lens. What looked like nothing was the most densely packed field of light anyone had ever seen.

When someone has wounded us deeply, we stare at them and see only darkness — a void where trust used to be. We are ready to move the telescope. Point it somewhere more promising. Write that person off as empty space.

But El Roi — the God Who Sees — never looks at a human soul and sees nothing. He sees light still traveling toward the surface. He sees galaxies of grace forming in the dark.

Forgiveness is the decision to keep the shutter open. Not because we can see the light yet, but because the God of all creation has told us it is there. And when we trust Him enough to wait, what was empty becomes full beyond anything we could have imagined.