Light Years

It fascinates me to look into the night sky and to really think about what I am seeing.  If a star is 100 light years away, then it is so far away that it takes light 100 years to reach us.  That means that when I see the star, I'm actually seeing the light it shined when soldiers in Europe were fighting in World War I.

If you used a telescope, you might be able to see a star that was 2,000 light years away, and the light that you saw would be what the star sent into space on the night Jesus was born.

When astronomers see a star explode, if the star is 500 light years away, they are seeing something that happened 500 years ago.  That just boggles my mind.

Could it be that reading the Bible and trying to understand it shares some characteristics with astronomy?  When we read a letter Paul wrote, we are reading something that was written almost 2,000 years ago.  It was written to a church that existed 2,000 years ago -- what one would consider "light years" away from us.  We are looking back into the past, and we need to remember that.  We are also hoping that God will shine in our lives today through this letter that was written to a church 2,000 years ago.   And God does.  It's fascinating.