How Great Thou Art!

‘OLord my God, When I in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds

Thy hands have made,

I see the stars,

I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy power throughout

The universe displayed.’

Those are the words of Stuart K. Hine in his great hymn “How great Thou Art.”

But truth is, where I live in Temple with her glaring city lights, we seldom have the opportunity to view the stars.

And even when we can get away—perhaps to the mountains on vacation—look up into the night sky and witness the wonder of the starry heavens, what we see with our eyes is just an infinitesimal dot compared to the far flung wonders of interstellar space.

We are just now beginning to grasp in a small way the size of our universe and the uncountable works of our God.

Back in 1961 Time magazine reported that with the two hundred inch Palomar telescope astronomers could see over seventy five million galaxies like ours.

Above it all is the great God who created it.

This is Job’s take on God and his creation: “He made all the stars—the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the southern sky.”

If our universe were the size of North America—from Canada to Florida, to Panama, to California, and up to Alaska—do you know how big our solar system, the Milky Way, would be? It would fit inside a coffee cup!

Then, consider this.

Thirty five years ago in 1977 we sent a probe, Voyager 1 and 2, out toward the edge of our coffee cup.

Today, 35 years later, it hasn’t reached the brim of the cup.

And when scientists beam a message to Voyager, at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second), it takes some 15 hours to get there!

And today, with the Hubble Space Telescope we know that there are billions and billions of galaxies out beyond our own!

“Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee; How great Thou art! How Great Thou art!”

We can but stand in awe, declaring with the psalmist, “Oh Lord, Our God, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”

Clyde Nichols is a retired minister, having served First Christian Church in Temple for 27 years as senior minister. He is the author of three books of devotionals and writes a religious column for several Texas newspapers.