Sometimes I wonder about God. Don’t get me wrong--I am a committed believer, and I have seen many miracles in my day. God’s love is the center of my personal universe. But, like all humans everywhere, some days I still wonder.
Today was one of those days. Our choir broadcast this morning was about children, and the women sang a song where the sopranos assumed the voice of a child:
“Mother, tell me the story that I love to hear:
Tell me of heaven, and why I came here.
Mother, tell how you love me, and gently speak,
And then I’ll go to sleep.
Mother, tell me of Jesus and how He is near;
Tell how He loves me, and I will not fear.
Mother, tell how His Spirit brings comfort and peace,
And then I’ll go to sleep.”
I was struck by our human need to feel safe and protected in this dangerous and uncertain world. Parents are so powerful compared to children, and their power and love are potent antidotes against fear for their small children. But we grow up. Surely part of our need for God grows out of our desire to continue to be protected by a powerful parent. And part of the struggle of faith is that we are not always protected. Some people are miraculously healed of cancer, while others die and leave their families and friends grieving, though their faith and prayers may be equal. Some people of faith live in poverty in chaotic, lawless places, while others (like me) spent their lives in plenty and safety. Is faith just wishful thinking?
Did we just make it all up?
But then I remembered the Moons of Jupiter.
Galileo Galilei read about a telescope that had been made by a German astronomer, and he decided to make one himself, which was an exceedingly Renaissance thing to do. It was also a bit heretical: the Church at the time was convinced that the Bible proved the earth must be the center of the universe, with everything else moving around it. The new theories of Copernicus and Kepler, which suggested the earth and the other planets actually moved around the sun, were anathema to the church hierarchy.
Well, Galileo built his telescope and turned it to the sky. He looked at Jupiter. To me, what he saw there proved to be anything but heretical; in fact, it has bolstered my faith many times. Galileo looked and Jupiter and saw, for the first time, Jupiter’s moons clearly orbiting the giant planet. They looked like a model of the solar system orbiting the sun, and they were definitely not orbiting the earth. The first thing mankind saw when we looked into the heavens was a model of how the heavens are put together: Jupiter’s moons, a type and shadow of the earth orbiting the sun, the solar system orbiting the galaxy, galaxies orbiting each other, black holes and red dwarfs. Galileo saw the whole miraculous universe in miniature, if you can call Jupiter miniature. And he didn’t want to keep quiet about it. So he got to spend the rest of his life on house arrest.
We really, really can’t even begin to comprehend God. We worship the Being who made Jupiter and its moons, who flooded the heights and depths of the earth with a fierce density of self-replicating life: biting, stinging, eating, birthing, dying, healing, decaying, fighting, loving, sacrificing, changing, resilient, growing, competing, building, breaking, worshipping life. He made the mountain that makes my house seem so temporary and so small. He made my body and my mind, and those of everyone and everything I love. Everything constantly changes and passes away in the blink of an eye, and yet life endures, and He endures. My Father is incomprehensibly powerful.
And yet...He made the moons of Jupiter. Everywhere we look, He has placed symbols and metaphors to help us understand, solar systems in miniature. Fruit flies have giant, simple genes for us to study. There are fires to help us understand the sun, and the conveniently placed moon to help us see our motion around the sun. Tidal forces drive the circulation that keeps our planet alive. The sun helps us see and keeps us alive. Spring comes every year after everything seems dead. We bear children and age and they take our place. We love our tiny children with every fiber of our beings, and we sacrifice everything for them.
He calls Himself our Father.
The next song was sung by the men, a lullaby to an infant. The men’s faces were transcendent with love as they sang. You could tell they were thinking, each one, of their own children.
“Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,
Papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird,
And if that mockingbird won’t sing,
Papa’s going to buy you a diamond ring…
More than birds and bells and rings,
Papa’s going to give you a heart that sings.
When you lift your voice in song,
In my heart you will belong.
Hush-a-bye,
Don’t you cry,
Papa’s here and always nigh.
Hush-a-bye,
Close your eyes,
Papa’s always here in this lullaby.”
He calls Himself our Father, and He loves me that much. More than that much. I can’t understand Him, but I can feel His incredible love, especially since He has given us our own children to love. Like the moons of Jupiter, my own relationships as a parent and a child can help me understand His relationship to me.
And the greatest miracle of my life is that I have felt His love, by which all earthly love pales in comparison. “Love divine, all loves excelling, Joy of heaven to earth come down.”
Hello, Jupiter’s moons.
