Feeling humbled

Last night was the first time since I'd impulse bought my cheap telescope that there was even a partial break in the clouds. So at midnight I hauled my wobbly plastic homage to Galileo to an even surface and set it up. 

Seeing only a handful of stars I did my best to point the telescope in the right direction. Because it was a cheap one, precision was out of the question, but EVENTUALLY I managed to locate something in the main lens. With my eyesight it was difficult to know if it was in focus or not but what I saw was mind blowing.

At first I thought it was a planet (aw bless!) but then I realised that everything I looked at couldn't be a planet, so it had to be a star. Having never viewed anything through a telescope I wasn't entirely sure what I should've been seeing. I saw a round object, sort of fuzzy, with more light around its edges than in the middle.

And then it struck me. I was looking at something like our Sun, only this was millions of light years away. The Earth, the Sun, and the other 8 planets were not the centre of the universe. There were others suns, and no doubt other planets, possible similar to the one I was standing on.

Suddenly the Universe seemed very large indeed. As Douglas Adams once said "You might think walking to the Chemists and back is a long way, but it's nothing compared to the expanses of Space" (it's from memory so apologies for its undoubted inaccuracies). There I was. Just a speck, on a speck, looking at another speck through a telescope, surrounded on every side by an infinitesimal number of specks. I can see now why existential angst is so popular! And yet I did not feel alone (any more than usual lol), nor did I feel insignificant or unimportant. In his collection of sermons entitled Shaking the Foundations, Paul Tillich said "Simply accept the fact that you are accepted". God accepts us for who we are because we are, and He is. No conditions, no pre-nups, no bargaining. We are accepted. That is Grace. Even in a big empty Universe we find meaning and acceptance.