God’s Endless Universe

Christmas, the author Norman Vincent Peale once said, “waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful”.

Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image of a region of the observable universe, near the constellation Fornax. Each spot is a galaxy, consisting of billions of stars. (Photo:NASA)

Recently a colleague and I were discussing our plans for the upcoming holidays. We were talking about who we will be with and where we will be celebrating Christmas.

I asked him whether he will go visit his mom who lives 950km away. He replied: I did not really plan to go home because I’ve just been home, but my mother insists that I come. She always thinks there is something magic that happens when I come home for Christmas.

Is there magic in Christmas? What is the magic of Christmas about? What magic is Norman Vincent Peale and my colleague’s mom talking about?

We all know the Christmas story. We have heard it so many times. And the story is simple. I remember the story as a child. There was Joseph and Mary. Mary was pregnant. They rode on a donkey. They were looking for a place to stay. They found a place in a stable. There were animals and shepherds. The baby was born in the stable. The baby was God.

Magic means something mysterious or supernatural. Sometimes magic happens right in front of our eyes. When you watch a magic show we see it happening, but we cannot believe it. It’s more that we cannot understand it and that’s why we don’t believe it.

We watch the magician with concentration, awe and wonder while we are trying to figure out how it works. We walk away not having comprehended the magic, but with an excited feeling after having enjoyed the experience.

The story of the universe is a magic story. We cannot comprehend it. Stars other than our sun are so far distant that astronomers refer to their distances not in terms of kilometres or miles – but in light-years. Light is the fastest-moving stuff in the universe. It travels at an incredible 300000km per second (Wikipedia).

The distance from the earth to the sun is enormously vast but, in terms of the universe as a whole, it is minuscule. The stars that are visible to us at night, the ones nearest to us, are so far away that light travelling from them to the earth at 300000km per second takes more than four years to get here.

There are stars which we can observe, though not as clear as the closer ones, whose light travelling at 300000km per second takes 800000 years to get here. That is incredible, incomprehensible, unimaginable. That’s magic.

If you research how big the universe is, Wikipedia offers this answer: Astronomers have measured the age of the universe to be approximately 13,8 billion years old. Because of the connection between distance and the speed of light, this means they can look at a region of space that lies 13,8 billion light-years away. This is only what astronomers can look at!

The human mind simply cannot comprehend the vastness of the universe and how it all works. Stars and planets and galaxies and the universe. There might be more universes other than the universe we know.

And in the middle of all of these billions and trillions of light years, in the middle of all the planets and galaxies and universes is God the creator and centre of it all. The God who sustains the universe is the same God who came to us as a baby born to a peasant woman in Bethlehem and who lived among us on this very earth we are living on now, in a place and country not far from us.

In fact, we can go on a pilgrimage and visit the physical place where God was. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. And by coming to live among us and teaching us, he also gave us the same super powers he himself as God has. Can you believe that! That is like magic.

And so when my colleague’s mom and Norman Vincent Peale speak about the magic of Christmas, they speak about God within us. The God within us who is able to bring that magic that makes everything softer and more beautiful to people all year round, but in a special way during Christmas time.