stars
Nebulae in the constellation Orion / Maarten Vanleenhove / Flickr
THE SKIES ABOVE can give us a daily reminder that we are intrinsically part of God's creation. God not only created us with intent, but God also reached out to meet us in human history.
In this season of Advent, we remember the coming of Jesus Christ to earth. God became fully human and lived among us (John 1:14). As Eugene Peterson paraphrased it, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, MSG). Jesus’ body, like ours, was made of atoms that were once between the stars. In his incarnation, Jesus not only took up human form and human DNA but took up atoms that tied him to our planet, our sun, and the stars beyond. Yet he was still fully God!
Jesus Christ is the cosmic Creator. As John 1 declares, “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (verse 3). I am still amazed whenever I remember that God, Creator of the galaxies, became one of us and walked the dusty roads of Palestine. How can humanity be insignificant if the Creator took on our form?
Photo: Star gazing, © MR.LIGHTMAN / Shutterstock.com
I learned from an article in The Sun magazine that the word eccentric comes from a Greek word that describes objects in space that don't revolve around the earth. The Greeks in ancient times saw Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn and observed that they wandered through the sky moving in a seemingly aimless way. They called these planets asteres planetai (wandering stars). The planets were not, however, wandering. They were revolving around the sun. It was the finite view of human beings that made them seem like wanderers.
Human eccentrics move in a seemingly aimless way, too. Their movements make them seem like wanderers to other human beings with finite views. They don't wander aimlessly, though. They revolve around a different center.