Roelf L. Ruffner
I stepped outside before sunrise on July 16, 2012, to a clear but humid Tennessee morning and witnessed a spectacular sight. In the eastern sky there was the crescent moon in its sultry splendor. Above and to the right of the moon were two bright luminaries in perfect vertical alignment. I recognized the brightest bottom star as the planet Venus and its less luminous partner, the planet Jupiter. I knew that they were planets and not real stars because they did not twinkle in the dark sky.
Before the coming of the completed revelation of God, the Holy Bible, our ancestors could look to the night skies and know that they were not alone in the universe. They asked themselves that age old question, “Who am I and why am I here?” King David wrote, When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained: what is man, that thou art mindful of him? And the son of man, that thou visitest him? (Psalms 8:3-4).
But mankind’s imagination went wild, constructing stories of gods, goddesses, heroes, and monsters in the night sky. Some went so far as to vainly worship the stars. Others formed fanciful, complicated, astrological charts trying to predict the future.
Many in our modern enlightened age see that same created perfection in the night sky and darkly project upon it the blind chance of evolution. They concoct equally fanciful tales, such as the Big Bang Theory, to explain how this perfection just happened to predictably come together in the morning sky so we might gaze in wonder upon it. Others look at this same wonder and mentally exclaim, “So what!” and continue in their purposeless existence.
But I looked at that astronomical wonder and thought, “Thank you, Lord.” Thank you Lord that You created this celestial arrow in the sky for a purpose—to point to You. I can know that I was created in Your image, not as an intelligent but groveling primate. . . . All praise and thanks to the King of the Universe!
