We went to an IMAX theater over the weekend, and I was blown away - three IMAX-enhanced movies about the wonder of the world we live in.
First, we spent 45 minutes in the high and mighty majesty of the Alps. Mountain peaks that defy human conquest. Amazing stuff!
Then, we went under the sea into a world of extravagant beauty and explosive color. The unforgettable creatures that inhabit the deep sea virtually scream, "We've got one wildly creative Maker!" For centuries, not one human ever saw His underwater wonders. So, why bother with all this creativity? Because He can't help Himself; He can't not be creative!
Finally, we spent another 45 minutes looking at the galaxies through the probing eye of the Hubble telescope. The power and glory of deep space takes my breath away: the massive celestial formations...the marvel of stars and galaxies being born and dying...the mind-blower of there being some 100 billion galaxies. It defines the word "awesome." As in, full of awe. What we can now see through Hubble's eye helps us also see that God is so big, and we and our world are so, so small.
What amazed me most as I watched all this wasn't what was in these movies, but what wasn't there: the grandeur of the mountains, the vivid creations beneath the sea, the towering majesty of the galaxies. What was missing? God was missing. Somehow they got through all this creation amazingness and never mentioned God once.
Those mountains so high they overwhelm us? They're just pimples on a tiny "tennis ball" that's one planet in one little galaxy. The oceans? He holds them "...in the hollow of His hand" (Isaiah 40:12). The universe with its billions of galaxies, each with billions of stars? "He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in...He brings out the starry host one by one and calls them each by name" (Isaiah 40:22, 26).
Job said that all the wonder of the universe is only the "...faint whisper we hear of Him" and just "...the outer fringe of His works" (Job 26:14). Two thousand years before Hubble or IMAX, the Bible said that "God's invisible qualities...have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse" (Romans 1:20).
If ever any humans have been without excuse it's us. After all we've seen. Creation isn't the wonder. The Creator is. We should be facedown, on our knees, speechless before the "High King of Heaven."
One of the lunar astronauts said he was about halfway to our moon when he made the earth disappear. As he looked out the window of the space capsule, he just held his thumb in front of him. And this world we think is so all-important vanished behind a man's thumb.
And yet, "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). The God of the galaxies - He's so very big, and so very close. Wow!