15.5 Billion Light-Years

Wes Schools
Aug 22, 2017 · 5 min read

How your best thought on your best day falls 15 billion light-years short of how great and good God really is.

15.5 is a little hard to picture in my head, but I’m able to do it. To imagine a billion pieces of anything? No shot. And the only thing I can think of when I thinking about light-years is Buzz Lightyear.

official photo of Space Ranger Buzz Lightyear

Researchers and scientists have proven that light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Light moves at such an incredible speed that in the time you snap your fingers light has circled the earth 6 times. The sun at its farthest point from earth is 94.5 million miles away, yet the sunlight that you feel on your face left the surface of the sun 8 minutes ago. Scientists use light-years as the “basic” unit of measurement for sizing up how big the universe is. In one year, light travels 5 trillion, 865 billion, 696 million miles. Astrophysicists believe the outer edge of the universe is 15.5 billion light-years away from us. If that seems incomprehensible, it’s because it’s virtually impossible to imagine.

The Bible gives us really only one glimpse of just how big God’s omnipotence (unlimited power) and omniscience (knowing all things) is. Isaiah 55:8–9 says: “ For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

The Lord is speaking to us through the prophet Isaiah. In the two verses the Lord is giving us a physical comparison, in hopes that we would understand just how much we can’t fully understand him. The Lord gives us the metaphor that his thoughts and ways, are so much bigger than ours. God is saying that the distance between earth and the heavens is how much more his ways and thoughts are than our own. We obviously can’t practically take the Isaiah verses and try to find out the exact size of God. But Isaiah 55:8–9 is telling us that we need to understand that God is so much bigger than we think. The poetic distance of “earth to the heavens” can be understood as the size of the universe. Scientifically we have found that our universe could be around the size of 15.5 billion light-years. So the important truth to take away is that God and all of his attributes is unimaginably big, and 15.5 billion light-years is a size that you think about when we think of God.

I believe these verses are just as important as any doctrinal verses of the new testament. I would like to think that the truth of Isaiah 55:8–9 is equally believed in as the truth in John 3:16. It is important that we first understand the gospel, before trying to comprehend the size of God. God created us for a perfect plan and life, but we constantly choose to live for ourselves, yet God came down to die for us to restore true life with us. If I try to understand God before knowing the love he has for me, I timidly view him as the 7 foot stranger that I want nothing to do with. But when I view God the way he wants and is meant to be viewed, through the eyes of the gospel, I see 7 foot smiling father with arms opened wide.

Viewing God as the perfect father and provider he is, it is a blessing and joy to try to understand how big and good God is. After reading Isaiah 55:8–9 I now view God and his goodness with the size of 15.5 billion lights-years. His love, holiness, promises and plans are all bigger than I can understand. Yes I can’t actually picture how big 15.5 billion light-years is, but I know God is 15.5 billion light years true by the life and person of Jesus Christ.

We get to live everyday in the truth that God is 15.5 billion lights-year bigger than any of our plans, dreams, or life circumstances. Here’s two way we can choose to live everyday:

1. We can dream big. So the biggest dream on the best day of man’s life is falls 15.5 billion light-years short of God’s plan. Why wouldn’t we commit everyday and very dream we have to him first, and see how many billion light-years big he makes it. I don’t want to live one plan out that is not apart of God’s plan. God is 15.5 billion light-years bigger than any dream of ours.

2. We don’t have to worry. If our ambitions are in correlation with spelling God’s glory. Then we don’t have to freak out when our current circumstance is not what we thought it would be. We focus on God’s promises for us, not our current and confusing circumstance. For all we know the current circumstance, is the reason why it is a God-sized accomplishment. Life sometimes needs to go so low that you know only God can change and accomplish. Any really? How small are my problems to a God that is 15.5 billion light-years good.


Knowing the 15.5 billion light-year size of God tells us how much it took for Jesus Christ to die on a cross for you and I. Jesus Christ was 15.5 billion light-years holy, perfect, and powerful. Yet he choose to become the very sin of the earth. Jesus choose to take the punishment of the sins of the world. A pain level of 15.5 billion light-years. The only reason why he would do that is because his love for us is 15.5 billion light-years big and you are of 15.5 billion light-years value to God.

How deep the Father’s love for us
How vast beyond all measure
That He should give His only Son
To make a wretch His treasure

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Wes Schools

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https://wesschools.com

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