{"id":1876,"date":"2021-09-30T14:21:20","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T13:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/?page_id=1876"},"modified":"2022-01-09T09:29:36","modified_gmt":"2022-01-09T09:29:36","slug":"the-very-big-picture","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/october-2021\/the-very-big-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"The (Very) Big Picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keith Wilson<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not much of a picture, is it? Just a collection of dots and blobs on a black background. Nevertheless, the first time I saw it, it stopped me in my tracks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>For those who don\u2019t know and haven\u2019t guessed, it\u2019s a photograph produced from images captured by the Hubble telescope. For me at least, the truly amazing thing is that the dots and blobs aren\u2019t stars: each of them, with very few exceptions, is a galaxy.<\/p>\n

Some Friends may be thinking \u201cSo what?\u201d or \u201cWhat has this to do with Forty-Three?\u201d Indulge me a little longer and all will, I hope, become clear. Crucially, each of the galaxies in that picture contains a lot of stars. The number of stars in an \u2018average\u2019 galaxy (if there is such a thing) is usually estimated at somewhere between 100 million and 100 billion. Even at the lowest estimate, that really is a lot of stars!<\/p>\n

My immediate reaction was that, given these numbers, it seems to me impossible to believe that we could be alone in the universe. It really would be the epitome of arrogance to assume that with all those stars, our world orbiting our sun is the only one on which life has evolved. I find it rather comforting to think that we are not alone, and \u2013 possibly even more comforting if other \u2018civilisations\u2019 are as perverse as ours \u2013 to know that interstellar distances are vast and probably unbridgeable.<\/p>\n

The picture also made me think about my belief in God. (Incidentally, I do have concerns about the word \u2018God\u2019 with all its entailments, but I\u2019ll use it here for convenience.) I had been unsure about whether I believed in a creator God, especially as I remember Jocelyn Bell-Burnell saying she didn\u2019t because she knew enough about astrophysics to be convinced that the hand of God wasn\u2019t needed for creation. The picture has, however, tipped me the other way. I can\u2019t believe that that wonder and complexity on such a scale \u2018just happened\u2019.<\/p>\n

While my belief in a creator has been uncertain, for as long as I can remember I have believed in a God, hopefully benevolent, who takes an interest in us and what we do. The picture colours even this belief. What manner of entity, if entity is the right word, could be attentive to all that\u2019s going on in a universe with an estimated billion trillion stars and God knows (literally!) how many planets? Even if God didn\u2019t create the universe, that\u2019s a mighty big management project, especially remembering that Matthew 10:29 assures us that the oversight extends even to sparrows!<\/p>\n

Possibly the answer is in Isiah 55:8-9: \u201cFor my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways,\u201d says the Lord. \u201cFor as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts\u201d. That seems very apposite \u2013 even if it is one of the biggest understatements of all time!<\/p>\n

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Forty-Three<\/em> Newsletter \u2022 Number 510 \u2022 October 2021
\n<\/strong>Oxford Friends Meeting
\n43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW<\/p>\n

newsletter@oxfordquakers.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keith Wilson Not much of a picture, is it? Just a collection of dots and blobs on a black background. Nevertheless, the first time I saw it, it stopped me in my tracks. For those who don\u2019t know and haven\u2019t guessed, it\u2019s a photograph produced from images captured by the Hubble telescope. For me at … Continue reading The (Very) Big Picture<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"parent":1829,"menu_order":125,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1876","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1876"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1922,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1876\/revisions\/1922"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxfordquaker.com\/newsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}