A trek from the trees to the stars

From my childhood, I remember many times I would slip outside in the evening at my grandparent’s farm and look up.  I would take in a long slow breath as if trying to inhale all the stars in the sky as I marveled at them twinkling overhead.  Now I live in Elmira with all the street lights and noise.  I rarely see even one star in the course of the year, but I remember how I felt.  I imagined what it would be like to travel among the stars.  Of course, I was a sucker for shows like Star Trek, and Lost in Space, movies like Star Wars and Battle Star Galactica. 

I remember debating the question of life on other planets with my friends at Penn York Camp.  Since I don’t know definitively about the existence of life beyond this earthen orb, I offer this observation – If God is big enough to create the whole world, he could create it all just for us.  On the other hand, if he created the whole world, he could certainly have created other inhabited worlds.  If he chose to create life elsewhere within this universe, there is no reason that he would be obligated to tell us.  We simply need to trust him.  

As for whether this world was created or just came to be autonomously, I have to believe the former.  I am a designer by trade.  I have created thousands of designs, and I have never seen a single design come into being spontaneously.  Certainly the complexity and beauty of this world must have been designed.  That is my deep held conviction and the foundation of all that I believe.  As for what I believe about the nature of God – He is as mighty and terrifying as anything we can imagine, and yet as loving and tender as the butterfly wings he created for us to enjoy.  I believe that the testimony of Matthew Mark, Luke and John is trustworthy, and that God revealed himself to us in Jesus Christ.  This is the only thing that makes sense to me.  Each person has to decide for themselves what and who they will believe.  As for me, the man who gave his life for me and then rose from the dead three days later is the one I choose to follow.

Some day, he will take me on a trek though the stars that he made to a city that he has prepared.  Until then, I can only imagine what such a trek might be like.