Johannes Kepler and the Songs Without Sound

In 1619, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler published a work he had labored over for twenty years. He called it Harmonices Mundi — The Harmony of the World. Kepler had discovered that the planets move in precise mathematical patterns, and he believed these patterns were nothing less than music — a cosmic song composed by the Almighty Himself.

Kepler once wrote, "I was merely thinking God's thoughts after Him." He did not see his telescopes and equations as replacements for faith. They were instruments of worship. Every orbital calculation confirmed what the psalmist had declared centuries earlier: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands."

What struck Kepler most was that this declaration required no translation. The elliptical orbit of Mars spoke the same truth over Prague that it spoke over Jerusalem. Day after day, night after night, as Psalm 19 says, the heavens pour forth speech — yet "there is no speech or language where their voice is not heard."

Kepler spent his final years in poverty, dismissed by those who thought his faith quaint and his science dangerous. But he never wavered. He had listened to the silent sermon the Creator had written across the night sky, and he found it more convincing than any argument.

The same sky stretches over you tonight. The sermon is still playing.