Cosmic Cliffs
If the images released this week from NASA's Webb Telescope are giving you pause, take note. For many, these majestic images of thousands of galaxies clustered in a mere grain of sand are confirmation that our life on Earth is a mere speck in a much larger reality. For others, the images can be unmooring, making them question their faith, their place, and their purpose. (For a glimpse at the initial images, look here: https://webbtelescope.org/)
Launched on Christmas Day in 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope boasts greatly improved infrared technology that allows it to view images that are too faint, distant, or old for the Hubble Space Telescope to capture. It took the $10 billion telescope 30 days to travel nearly one million miles to its permanent home in space, and the telescope will focus on four primary areas of discovery: first light in the universe, assembly of galaxies in the early universe, birth of stars and protoplanetary systems, and planets.
Dubbed "Cosmic Cliffs," one of the photos resembles mountains and valleys on a moonlit night. According to NASA, however, the "cliffs" are actually giant gaseous cavities seven light years high, with stellar winds and intense ultraviolet radiation that have carved out deep caverns below. In the midst of the valley-like caverns are hot, young stars, and the Webb Telescope will allow scientists to begin measuring the rapid formation of a star in ways that have never been seen before.
If you find your faith buoyed by these stunning new images, be encouraged: God's creation indeed is more vast, timeless, and shifting than we know. If, on the other hand, conversations about sprawling galaxies and evolutionary theories challenge your faith, don't shy from the questions that may arise. The more we press into the unknown, the more fully we will open our hearts and minds to a Creator who is omnipotent and timeless.
As you peruse the James Webb Space Telescope images this week, let these opening verses from Psalm 19 be a song for your soul:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
The infrared eyes of this "first light machine" will be peering far deeper into space than human eyes have ever looked; and hovering amidst the cocooning gases and the scattered mosaics is a Creator whose heavens are pouring forth soundless speech, declaring his glory to the ends of the galaxies.
Peace on your week,
Jennie