Below is a picture of a tiny, very tiny section (less than your fingernail covers) of space, that actually shows only three stars (recognizable by a cross-like diffraction pattern formed by the secondary mirror ('spider') support of a reflecting telescope). The rest of the objects in this small field are galaxies. And the rest of the deep sky shots, all 360-degrees of it, are studded with nothing but galaxies.
A galaxy contains millions of stars. Ours, the Milky Way, home of our solar system and millions of stars in it, is traversed by light traveling at 160,000 miles per second (that's the distance from the earth to the moon) in 100,000 years.
A close-up of colliding galaxies. Note the stars (cross-like images) that are part of our galaxy. The white "puffs" in the larger galaxy are actually star clusters, not individual stars.
Our sun is an average yellow star, whose light takes eight minutes to reach us. Our closest star (α-centarui) sends light that takes 4 years to reach us. The light we see of our closest galaxy, the Andromeda, left 2 million years ago.
There are billions of galaxies out there. Their cataclysms and catastrophic extragalactic supernovae star explosions have been recorded by the images that traveled millions of years to reach us.
Galactic supernova a giant star (arrow) expodes in a distant galaxy NGC 2841 50 million years ago.
When I say that corruption predates mankind, I mean it. We did not usher corruption as the Bible says. God did not create just the heaven and the earth. That much is obvious.
That is the spiritual truth which is always underscored for me in the book of Job. Starting in chapter 38 God spurns Job harshly for speaking words without knowledge.
Returning to the astronomy if I may assert another aspect for your meditation.
What appears to us to be such an awesome display in the universe can instead be understood as no more than the phenomenon of the mathematics of observation.
Please take a few minutes and experiment with this interactive display of the powers of 10.
At 10+0 meters, youll see a bush but decrease the powers of ten and youll see a universe of molecular detail. Increase it, and youll see astronomical vistas.
This is part of what betty boop and I call the observer problem. What we presume to be real is strongly biased to our position as an observer.
All 1080 particles in the perceptible universe, for instance, may be multiply imaged from a single particle in a fifth, time-like dimension. Matter may be a shadow of extra-dimensional momentum components we cannot yet detect. Etc.
IOW, "all that there is" is God's revelation of Himself, His will and unknowable in its fullness. The revelation is not for this heaven and earth but rather, for the next heaven and earth.
Adam was to observe good and evil. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was placed where he could see it in the Garden of Eden. But he was not to feed on it, not to make it part of himself. By observing good fruits v evil fruits, he would have gained a better understanding of what it means that "God is good". Ditto for Light v. darkness, etc.
To use a modern metaphor, it is as if Adam was being shown a stage play [the physical universe] so that he could understand the difference between good and evil to comprehend that God is good and not evil. But instead of watching the show to absorb this revelation of God, he jumped onstage and became a part of it. He couldnt step off the stage to be just a spectator again and thus he was banned to mortality, doomed to be an actor in the play he was intended to watch (Genesis 4.) He did it to himself. The only way Adam can get off that stage is to be born anew as a spectator, that is what Christ accomplished in the Resurrection.
I fully believe that place is earth..
And the biblical "heaven" will be (for some- maybe most) to populate(people) this wonderful Universe.. And that human life here, was and is qualifing "US" to do that and other things..
And that 1Cor 2;9 is beyond prophetic to being a promise..
Thanks for a very good post..