The Orion Nebula and God's Love For Us
Posted by Brandon Pyle on December 26, 2023
Categories:
Blog
Christianity
Photography
"He who made the Pleiades and Orion, and turns deep darkness into the morning and darkens the day into night, who calls for the waters of the sea and pours them out on the surface of the earth, the Lord is his name;" - Amos 5:8
This is a photo I made of the Orion Nebula, also known as Messier 42. A total of 479 photos came together to create this picture of the star formation. This was my first attempt at photographing a deep sky object with my Panasonic GX8 Camera and 100-300mm telephoto lens, and I am very happy with the result! It's a little out of focus, but overall there is still quite a bit of detail and the colors pop very well. The photo and equipment I used to take it, however, is not the point of this post. Let's talk more about this scripture from the book of Amos.
The book of Amos was written approximately 2,784 years ago, over 2,300 years before the first telescope was invented. Despite this, if you Google when and who discovered Orion, you will be told that it was Galileo in 1617. The Bible correctly predicts over 100 scientific discoveries - including Orion - before they could ever be confirmed scientifically. According to astrophysicist Hugh Ross, the odds of this happening are approximately 1 in 10^300 (that's 10 with 300 zeroes after it). For context, Hugh Ross also calculated the probability of a person being killed by the reversal of the second law of thermodynamics (this would basically reverse time). This came out to be 1 in 10^80. If this doesn't lead you to praise and glorify God, I don't know what will. The evidence for God is evident in all of creation.
The even more amazing part is that God created this beautiful universe we live in for us because He loves us. He loves us so much, in fact, that He didn't stop at creation to express it. He went so far as to send His only Son down to earth to live a perfect life, die a criminal's death, and ultimately defeat death by raising back to life three days later. Our sin, which we commit every day, separates us from God. However, because Christ defeated death by His resurrection, if we repent of our sins and believe in Jesus as our Savior, we will receive this free gift of eternal life and a relationship with God Himself. That's right - the creator of the universe, the one who hung up Orion in the cosmos - God wants a relationship with you because He loves you. How unbelievable is that!
This Christmas season it is important for all of us to reflect on this truth and keep Christ at the forefront.