Maker of the Universe

My goal is to read the entire Bible in French. As I've mentioned, reading in French makes me slow down. I can't skim over familiar portions. I need to think about what I'm reading. 

Starting today in Genesis 1, I am freshly in awe of the God who created everything we see. He made (and makes) so many things in such great diversity and on both astronomical and microscopic scales. 

Let's start with the astronomical: 

Last night I looked up at the constellation Orion. One of his shoulders is a reddish star called Betelgeuse. According to Louie Giglio's Indescribable book and DVD (which are fabulous, by the way), Betelgeuse is twice the size of earth's orbit around the sun. The radius of earth's orbit around our sun is 93 million miles, so that means Betelgeuse is roughly 372,000,000 miles wide. If the earth were the size of a golf ball, Betelgeuse would be the height of six Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. It would take 262 trillion earths to fill Betelgeuse's volume. That's like filling 3,000 indoor football stadiums with golf balls. 

Betelgeuse is not the largest star God has created, either. Nor are the few dozen stars I can see above my house representative of the vast number God has created. Our galaxy has 300 billion stars. There are probably between 100-200 billion galaxies in the universe. Wow. 

Coming back to Earth, God also created great diversity and multitude. Here's a breakdown of the number of different species (i.e. distinctly different types of creatures and plants) scientists estimate:

• 1.5 million fungi
• 3,000 brown algae
• 17,000 lichens
• 321,212 plants
• 1,367,555 non-insect animals
• 10-30 million insects

Getting out our microscopes, scientists estimate there are somewhere between tens of thousands and billions of different types of bacteria and other tiny things. 

God has made a LOT of different things, from teeny tiny to bigger-than-we-can-comprehend. Yet Jesus, "who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2:6-11).