God Feels Impossible To Reach*
Just Like the Stars
Looking up at the sky at night, I see millions of stars. Those stars — thousands of light-years away — are so hard to reach even if we tried. Scientists have found that the closest star to earth, besides our sun, is four light-years away. One light-year means light has to travel for one year at 300,000 kilometers per second to reach earth. That means it would take a spaceship thousands of years to get to that star. The sun, which is the closest star to earth, is still almost 93 million miles away. These stars are so hard to reach, and human beings do not have the technology to reach them.
“All we ever see of stars are their old photographs,” explains Alan Moore in his novel, Watchmen. For all I know, those stars that I see could already be burnt out; and I just see a light that no longer exists in the present. One day, a star could be brightly shining down — the next day it could no longer be there.
The stars are so out of reach that they disappear even though they are shining so bright. As the sun comes up in the morning, the stars in the sky disappear — never to be seen or heard of again — until the next night when the sun sets. Those stars are always there though — stars from the past, present, and more in the future — shining down on me.
These stars remind me of my first experience of God and how I viewed Him. Like any typical Sunday in a Christian household, my family and I went to church. At a young age, I attended Sunday School learning about the stories of the Bible. I learned how 2000 years ago Jesus came down to earth, died, and rose again to save me from my sins because He loved me so much. “Jesus loves me this I know. For the Bible tells me so… Jesus loves me, he who died. Heaven’s gates to open wide. He will wash away my sins. Let His little child come in,” sings the well known Sunday School song, “Jesus Loves Me.”
At that moment, God seemed unreachable to me — so far away and so “long ago,” just like the stars. I saw Him as a past figure 2000 years ago. For all I knew, God could have been “burnt out” 2000 years ago just like the stars, and what I was learning about in the Bible was a “light” shining from the past; but it did not exist in the present.
As I grew older, I realized, just like the stars, God is always there. God was there in the past, and He is here in the present and future. I saw God and how He was there with my family and I through hard times. There were so many incidences in my life where things occurred that only God could produce. For example before I decided to attend Sterling College, there were so many “conincidences” that pointed me to Sterling. We had friends that moved to Sterling — I didn’t know anyone before. My dad took film of me playing volleyball before we knew that I would be sitting bench my senior year. There were so many other “God-incidences” leading me to Sterling College. I can’t deny that God is omnipresent when things like that happened. It may seem like God disappears sometimes — just like the stars in daytime — but in reality, He and the stars are always there.
In his book, No Man Is an Island, Thomas Merton explains, “God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.” Now that I see that God is in the here and now, I want to have a relationship with God. As this relationship grows, I believe God will be closer to me and more present in my life. I want God and my relationship with Him to be like the stars. I want to be able to read the stars, see them present in the day and the night, have a personal dialogue with them, and feel comfort when I look at them.
“There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing… And as I lay there, it occurred to me that God is up there somewhere. Of course, I had always known He was, but this time I felt it, I realized it,” explains Donald Miller in his book Blue Like Jazz. Miller’s first experience of God is similar to my first experience. Like Miller, I experienced God in the church; learning about stories in the Bible and about God and His love for us. When he looked up at the night sky, Miller realized that God is actually there; he felt God’s presence. That is exactly what I have discovered over time.
God is so numinous and unknowable, just like the stars in space. Those stars that we are able to see in the sky are only a small fraction of the universe. They are beyond our world, and we will never be able to reach them. God is this divine being that is greater than anything we know. Our human brains will never be able to know, comprehend, and understand how great God is. Yet we are able to know God personally and have a relationship with Him.
When I look up at the stars at night, I see God. He is there looking down on me, watching over me from far away. Yet at the same time, He is right beside me. He seemed so far away, but now I have reached Him.
