The calendar begins. Time commences. The rhythm of life is here.
“And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.” (Genesis 1 v 14-19)
Pause here for a moment. Let yourself be astonished.
Consider the sun and moon, positioned within our solar system alongside eight planets and the dwarf planet Pluto. Now imagine this single system as merely one among 100 to 400 billion other planetary systems scattered throughout our galaxy. Our cosmic address reads: The Milky Way—a name the ancient Greeks poetically called “the Milky Circle.” Within our galaxy alone burn between 100 and 400 billion stars. If these numbers haven’t yet overwhelmed you, consider this: astronomers estimate there are approximately two trillion observable galaxies. If we assume the minimum of 100 billion stars per galaxy, the observable universe contains roughly 200 billion trillion stars. (I can’t tell you how long it has taken me to work out these figures from some website on stars and planets, I should have just said there’s a lot of planets and stars out there!) Then … what’s beyond what we can see?! Incomprehensible, that’s what is beyond.
Let’s come back to earth for a moment.
The sun, moon and stars are our cosmic timing device.
Here we are in October 2025 and our day has begun and the night is over, the same structure that we take for granted but created at the beginning of time itself. Every living thing to come has benefited from this purposeful structure to life. We know why, it is to establish the calendar and the clock. But more than this, see the words again, “to mark sacred times”. From the beginning God established sacred moments to encounter Him. Many of us fight the relentlessness of time and the demands within it. . We do everything possible not to miss one another amid our scheduled lives. Yet how often do we overlook God’s original intention, to establish sacred time with us, to inhabit the moments He continually offers? When we fail to pause and witness the beauty of a sunrise or sunset, we miss the very purpose for which time was created. In our neglect, time itself becomes our god.
The invitation still stands for us all. Don’t get lost in the wonder of it all.
Missions Paul 