Hubble Finally Proves We Are Not Alone.

It took the longest time for the Hubble Space Telescope's (HST) pictures to start showing up in the public domain in a big way. For a few years I used to joke that some atheist at NASA was keeping the pictures from the public as the telescope actually found that God was out there looking at His creation as if He were looking at fish in his family room aquarium. The end of the Universe, the definition of reality as we understood it, was the outside surface of a galactic glass fish bowl. Certainly, the atheists couldn't let the human race know that there really was a god and that he looked suspiciously like the guy painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Thankfully, that is not exactly what the HST found. God does not have gray hair, His palms are not pressed up against a glass bowl, there seems to be no end in sight of His creation, and time and distance still remain so unlimited that our minds have little or no chance of grasping their magnitude nor meaning. Some have suggested that the Universe is a lonely place. They use HST photos to suggest that there probably is life somewhere else, but it is unimaginably remote to us.

I, however, see the HST photos in a different light. God is always everywhere in His creation. He is all around us. He gave us such a wonderful place in His creation to stand, so that we can see Him through His creativeness. Those galaxies...perhaps they are God's palms on the glass surface of our imagination and His reality.

We are not alone in this Universe. We have each other. We have our families. We have our relationship with our creator through His Word, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. It never ceases to amaze me at how lonely some folks feel. It never stops boggling my mind that we think we are the only ones with a problem, that what we are going through is novel to the human race, and that God might not or doesn't understand. We also fear that He will not be willing to forgive us. This fear causes us to withdraw from Him and from our fellow believers. No, no, no...He is faithful and just to forgive....and cleanse...all unrighteousness.

I think that feeling alone is the wrong way to look at life. Our culture wants us to define ourselves by emphasizing our uniqueness. I am reminded of Gary Larson's "The Far Side" joke of the penguin standing up in the midst of thousands of identical penguins and singing out Frank Sinatra's famous song, "I Did It My Way." Uniqueness is fine, but it has its limits. Those things that make us "the same" as others are sometimes better to consider. We are all sinners who have access to God's grace through Jesus Christ. We all are His creations. We are all human and loved by God. We all live in the same world and though we may each view it differently, that world is our gift from God. We all need food, water, shelter and the like. We also all need to love and be loved.

When we look at the stars and feel alone...that is wrong. Those stars mean God is out there. It means God is with us. So, let's be with each other, be there for each other. No need to be or feel alone...the Universe is a beautifully together place.