Ultra deep field

I recently read about the Hubble telescope, Ultra Deep Field image.

Sweet name right.

Basically, they picked a tiny spot in the sky and trained this massive space telescope on that spot and recorded all the light that came from distant stars, for days and days. Some scientists thought it would be an expensive waste of time. The picture that emerged was incredible.

 

 

The slice of sky they chose was a tiny, tiny “dark” space, between other stars.

If you were lying on the ground looking up at the stars, imagine dividing the sky into 13 million parts and then choosing one of those parts (a dark one at that) and looking at with a telescope. How many stars do you think you’d see? 

The image revealed 10,000 galaxies. Not 10,000 stars. 10,000 galaxies.

And each galaxy is full of millions of stars. 

Our own galaxy the Milky Way, has around 300 million stars. And like our own sun, each star has its own solar system full of planets. 

All told, apparently there are over 70 sextillion stars. 70,000 million million million stars. 

Thats a 7 followed by 22 zeroes.

I can’t even try to imagine how big that is, its so big that I don’t have anything to compare it to.

I can’t say, “its like as many as all the grains of sand in all the beaches in the world.” Hell no, its way bigger than that. 

This helps give a feel for it. Click on the video twice to pop it out.

 

 

Numbers that big, make me feel insignificant, they make me wonder about my human-centric perspective of the universe.

Sure we feel pretty important here on earth. We own this planet. But when I think about us just being one small speck on a drop of water in an ocean of oceans, it makes me wonder about things.

A heart question I’ve heard and I’ve asked in a thousand diffent ways is this: Does God love me? Personally, Intimately?

Happiness

I was recently reading this article by Tim Kreider, a writer for the New York Times.

He writes about his search for happiness,

“We do each have a handful of those moments, the ones we only take out to treasure rarely, like jewels, when we looked up from our lives and realized: “I’m happy.” One of the last times this happened to me, inexplicably, I was driving on Maryland’s unsublime Route 40 with the window down, looking at a peeling Burger King billboard while Van Halen played on the radio. But this kind of intense and present happiness is heartbreakingly ephemeral; as soon as you notice it you dispel it, like blocking yourself from remembering a word by trying too hard to retrieve it. And our attempts to contrive this feeling through any kind of replicable method — with drinking or drugs or sexual seduction, buying new stuff, listening to the same old songs that reliably give us shivers —never quite recapture the spontaneous, profligate joy of the real thing. In other words be advised that Burger King billboards and Van Halen are not a sure-fire combination, any more than are scotch and cigars.”

Reading his article gave me an incredible insight into my own life.

At one point, I was exactly the same.

For so long, I felt mostly ok. Not great, not terrible, just ok. I had bad days and better days, but for the most part, “happy” moments were just as elusive. Elusive in the sense that I chased happy moments from guilty pleasures to foreign countries but never found any consistency, never anything lasting.

My idea of happiness was that you get by, try to have fun, live your life and appreciate the fleeting shivers of happiness while they last.

Back then, I could remember certain moments when I felt truly happy all over.

Standing on top of a giant sand dune in Colorado, tired and hot from climbing for an hour in the sun. Shoes full of sand, water bottle empty, walking stick perched at the highest point on the dune, like I imagined the explorers of old. Sitting, watching the sun set as the sky streaked purple and red. Feeling a deep sense of contentment and then a rush of happiness.

Then I walked down the dune, continued with life as normal and soon forgot about it.
But the nagging feeling in the back of my mind was that I was settling for less.
I didn’t know exactly what more was, but I knew what that moment of joy on the dune felt like and a tiny part of me hoped that I could live IN the full hurricane force of that joy, not just taste it on the wind.

Then I met Jesus.

How simple, how cliche it sometimes sounds. But a few days ago I was sitting in my house, after a long day at work and with absolutely nothing going on. And I felt incredibly happy. And I realized that I feel happy most of the time now.

It blows my mind that a simple morning spent with Jesus makes me so intensely happy that I don’t want to go out of my room.

In comparison, those fleeting moments of happiness I used to settle for would never satisfy me anymore. I’ve found the fountain of true joy.

Why does God need us?

I’m no philosopher. I’m no Andrew Call. But every once and awhile, I get struck with deep questions. 

The one that has been rolling around in my head lately has been this one.

Why does God need us?

What if anything, could the God of the universe need from frail little people like us?
What do you give to someone who has everything? 

If God is powerful enough to create time, matter, our planet, rainforests and the human brain; what can we possibly build, create, produce or provide for him that he couldn’t already create in a moment?

Sometimes I talk about wanting to “build his kingdom,” as if He needed help. 

Sometimes I talk about wanting to bring God glory, as if He needs somebody to give it to him.

The thing is, 

If God is omnipotent, he is entirely capable of destroying every fortress and stronghold and advancing his kingdom to cover the earth in the time it takes me to brush my teeth.

If God wanted to he could appear in a blaze of light and a thunder of trumpets to every single human on the earth and they WOULD be forced to bow and worship Him.

God doesn’t need me to build anything for him. He is the supreme builder.

God doesn’t need me to bring him Glory, he is the King of Glory and his Glory already fills the earth.

What the heck are we doing then? What good are we to him?

The fact of it hit me right in the gut yesterday:

 

Some thoughts on Iran

I don’t know how much everyone is following what is going on in Iran, but I am following it obsessively.

The fact that I, a random college student at OU can literally have as much access to direct information from Iran as the best reporters in the world is incredible to me

If you have been reading news from any of the major news agencies, you should realize that most reporters are staying up all night, reading blogs, twitters and facebook accounts from people posting in Iran. With a few exceptions, all the reporters in Iran are stuck in their hotel rooms.

News from Iran emerges from a chaotic and confusing mush of twitter snippets and photos that manage to make it past the Iranian censors.

A Moussavi supporter was injured in a demonstration.

Trying to understand what is going on in Iran by reading blogs and twitters is like trying to drink from a fire hydrant.

What emerges from an onslaught of frantic messages is a hazy picture of confusion, chaos and uncertainty.

-The Basij are waiting at the hospitals to kidnap protesters coming in for treatment.

-Helicopters dropping acid on the crowds

-Government agents are tracking cellphones and arresting protest organizers

-Basij militia are driving motorcycles straight into the crowds

-Plainsclothes militia are waiting until the cover of darkness and then breaking into houses and killing people

The question everyone is asking is: what happens next?

Another revolution? Brutal repression? Will the government compromise? Will the protests grow regardless if lots of people start dying?

It sickens me that in my gut, I feel that many more  innocent people are going to die in Iran before this is over.

It sickens me not just because people getting brutally murdered makes me sad, but also because over time I have really come to love Iran.

Growing up I had a decidedly negative view of Iran. My understanding of Iran was basically this:

Iran= Crazy Muslims had a revolution and created an “Islamic Republic,” turning a friendly country into an evil, scary, democracy-hating monstrosity which needed to be stopped.

Axis of Evil. Evil. Satan. Muslim. Iran. VS  Democracy. Freedom. Christian. USA

Of course, my understanding of Iran was birthed in ignorance and solidified by news stories on the “existential Iranian threat” that networks like Fox “News” produce on a daily basis.

A couple classes, a bunch of books, and numerous conversations later, my understanding of Iran has become decidedly more nuanced.

No country is “evil.”

people may be evil. Countries may do evil things. Iran is not evil.

It turns out that Iran is a breathtaking example of how democracy can look completely different from our Western understanding of it and yet function surprisingly well.
Regardless of the many setbacks, civil society and democracy is flourishing in Iran.

I recently spent most of an eight hour flight from Capetown to Amsterdam talking with a woman from Iran.

She grew up during the 1979 revolution, spent her college years in France and now lives half the year in Tehran and half the year in the US with her daughter. Her children are brilliant, photographers, painters, graphic designers. She spoke eloquently about democracy and the need for Iran to change and allow more freedoms. She hoped and prayed that Ahmadinejad would lose the election.

I saw in her a depth of character, creativity and intellect.  In another body, with another face I could have mistaken her for a liberal college professor.

Yet she was something different and far more interesting then a Middle-Easterner fed on Western ideas and perspectives.

She spoke with deep religious conviction, unafraid to display her Shia Muslim beliefs.

She described the beauty of Tehran, the way the flowers bloom in the spring

She spoke with fierce passion about Iran, the country she loves so much and would never forsake

She was refreshingly Iranian, unique and totally different from what I expected.

This snippet from a post by a young woman in Tehran captures some of these qualities to me:

“We feel so vulnerable, more than ever, but at the same time are aware of our power. No matter how strong it is collectively, it will do little to protect us today. We could only take our bones and flesh to the streets and expose them to batons and bullets. Two different feelings fight inside me without mixing with one another.     To live or to just be alive, that’s the question.”

A female supporter of the leading reformist Iranian presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, flashes a victory sign. Green is Mousavi's campaign color, a symbol of Islam and progress in Iran.

Massive protest in Tehran

My thoughts and prayers are with the Iranian people, may God protect them.

“Even when I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will not be afraid,
for you are close beside me.
Your rod and your staff
protect and comfort me.”

Psalm 23:4

Didn’t see it coming

Well.

I never thought I would join the blog-train.

I flirted with Xanga when I was a kid and decided that it was kinda disturbing that anyone in the world could read about my teenage angst.

I’ll be honest, my last Xanga post was exactly this:

“So does anyone actually get on Xanga anymore? Is there even any reason to post anything? Comment if you actually read this, I want to see how alone in this world I really am. haha I sound like some middle school kid who feels depressed because he thinks that if he doesn’t get enough comments that he has no friends. Sob. I have no friends…”

-copied from my xanga (no I won’t give you the name)

All to say, the real reason I am jumping on this train is because Stephen Pyle just did.

And that made me think, because if you know Pyle at all you would know that he is the most unlikely person in the world to start a blog.

Apparently not having a blog in the year 2009 would put me in the company of “backward thinking” individuals who refuse to adapt to new forms of communication. And having a blog puts me in the company of smart, progressive people, like our President, Barack Obama.

in the end it turns out that I am getting a blog for the same reason I got on Xanga.

because its the cool thing to do