Monday, December 14, 2009

May we never forget...

This past week, I found a short book sitting on the living room table. My mom had put it out, along with some other Christmas books. The book is by John MacArthur entitled "God's Gift of Christmas". I am not sure who gave this book to us but I offer greatest thanks to whoever it was! This evening, I was reading the chapter entitled "The Fullness God" and came across this humbling and awe-inspiring fact about our Lord Jesus Christ, beginning with John 1:2-3:

He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

MacArthur writes:

"Christ is not only the heir of creation; He was also in the beginning the divine agent of creation, the Person of the Trinity through whom the world was made and for whom it was fashioned.

Think of what this means. The expanse of creation is staggering.

- A hollow ball the size of our sun would hold about one million planets the size of the earth.

- The brightest star in our sky, Sirius Canis Major, is twice as big as our sun.

- Arcturus is more than twenty-three times larger than our sun.

- Betelguese, one of the stars visible in the constellation Orion, is about three hundred times larger than our sun.

No wonder Job expressed his awe of God in this way: 'How should man be just with God?... Which maketh Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the south' (Job 9:2, 9 KJV)

A ray of light travels about 186,000 miles per second. It takes eight-and-a-half minutes for light from the sun to reach us. If you could travel at that rate from earth, you could reach...

- the moon in a second and a half
- Mars in four-and-a-half minutes
- Jupiter in thirty-five minutes
- Pluto in about five hours, twenty minutes
- Alpha Centauri, the closest star, in four years, four months
- Sirius in eight-and-a-half years
- Arcturus in thirty-seven years
- Betelgeuse in about 522 years.

If you could count the stars as you traveled across the Milky Way (a journey of about 100,000 years at light speed), you would find about one billion stars, and there are billions more galaxies out there. The size of the universe if incomprehensible.

The baby in Bethlehem made all of it. He created everything."

May we never forget who was born in that manger in Bethlehem. Even as an infant, Jesus Christ continued to "uphold all things by the word of His power" and now, after making "purification of sins" He sits "at the right hand of the Majesty on high"
(excerpts from Hebrews 1:3).

May we never forget what a truly mighty God we serve, at Christmas and all year long!

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