Sunday Superposition #36

God knows your name; Cosmic Scoops; the Last Laugh

Sunday Superposition is a premium perk for paid subscribers, an end-of-the-month collection of spiritual themes and links to stuff I find interesting. This week’s reflection is inspired by an entry from my astronomy-themed devotional.

God knows your name

He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” —Genesis 15:5

In Genesis 15, God promises Abraham (then called Abram) He will bless him and make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. In Genesis 22:17, God then expands this promise to descendants “as numerous…as the sand on the seashore.” That’s a lot of descendants. The stars in the night sky must have seemed great in number to ancient people, yet surely not countless as the grains of sand on a seashore. The Bible sometimes uses hyperbole to make a point, so I’m not concerned about literally reconciling God’s promise to Abraham with reality, but on understanding what God reveals with this comparison.

For most of human history, people had no concept of our Galaxy’s vastness or the existence of other galaxies. They only knew what their eyes showed them, which was stunning enough before electric lights dimmed the night sky for many of us. If you’ve lived most of your life in a city or suburb, like I have, you might feel awestruck the first time you see the stars from a remote, dark place. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it: an endless sea of stars suspended in the cosmos, their countless lights twinkling as they complete their cosmic journeys through space, subtly stirred by Earth’s restless atmosphere. The last time I witnessed this, I laid on the ground for hours, captivated by the sight.

The Milky Way splashed across the night sky. Image credit: Joshua Koblin

When I ask my astronomy students how many stars they think are visible from a single point on Earth with the naked eye, they often guess hundreds of thousands. It certainly feels that way. But in reality, we can only see about 2,000–5,000 stars, depending on conditions. The ancients knew the count was somewhere in this range, yet those few thousand stars inspired many to believe they were gazing at the realm of gods.

But God had revealed something important to the ancient Israelites in Genesis 1: the heavens were not the home of gods but His own creation. Their awe for the night sky thus became awe for the One who made it. If God alone could craft such a spectacle, He is truly great—and sovereign over all.

We modern people know something the ancients didn’t: the universe stretches far beyond our neighborhood of stars and includes many more galaxies besides our own. By estimating the number of stars in a typical galaxy and the number of galaxies in the observable universe, we arrive at a staggering figure for the true number of stars in the heavens—10 billion trillion—a number far closer to the grains of sand on a seashore than the few thousand stars visible in an ancient sky. I believe this was an “Easter egg”—a hidden treat—for modern, scientifically-literate readers of the Bible, who can truly grasp the comparison’s depth. It also expands the scope of God’s sovereignty, encompassing billions of trillions of stars, not counting what may lie beyond the observable universe.