Wonderful Are Your Works

In today’s reading from Daniel (3:25, 34-43) we hear about a promise from God to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel about their offspring being multiplied “like the stars of heaven or the sand on the shore of the sea.”   Makes one wonder. 

What’s the greatest number?   Stars or sands?    When walking any beach and letting grains slip through our fingers, we’d all likely say, “It must be the sands?”  Certainly when thinking about the size and expanse of deserts such as the Sahara at 99.1 million square km, the number of stars cannot possibly be greater, so we would think.  

Researchers from the University of Hawaii guessed at the numbers of grains of sand by calculating the number of grains in a teaspoon multiplied by all the beaches and deserts in the world.   Their answer was 7,500,000,000,000,000,000 grains or seven quintillion, five hundred quadrillion grains.  Very few of us can wrap our minds around a number that large.

These same researchers offered that with the Hubble telescope we can count the millions and millions of galaxies and all their stars in just that part of the universe we can observe.  The number of stars is greater than 70 thousand million, million, million.   Again, unimaginable!  This means that for every grain of sand there are many multiple stars. The number of stars wins.  

So, next time we’re at Popponesset Beach (or any other) let’s look left and right and come to understand that the number of sand grains stretching to both horizons doesn’t even come close to a small portion of all the stars in the universe.    Remember that our sun is a relatively small star dwarfing the Earth.

Our reading ends with “Deliver us by your wonders, and bring glory to your name, O Lord.”  The stars are God’s wonders (sands as well).  Each one of us being an infinitesimal part of it all makes us a little bit of wonder bringing glory to God.

God, our Creator, doesn’t make junk.  Let's listen to Psalm 139:14 that sings: "...I praise you, so wonderfully you made me; wonderful are your works!..."  That's us, and all around us high and low, near and far.

Deacon David Pierce