The Patch of Sky That Wasn't Empty

In December 1995, astronomer Robert Williams made a decision his colleagues thought was foolish. As director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, he chose to aim the Hubble Space Telescope at a tiny, seemingly empty patch of darkness in the constellation Ursa Major — a sliver of sky no bigger than a grain of sand held at arm's length. For ten consecutive days, Hubble stared into what appeared to be nothing.

When the exposures were finally processed, the scientific community went silent. That blank patch of sky contained approximately three thousand galaxies — not stars, galaxies — each one home to hundreds of billions of stars. What looked like emptiness to the naked eye held more worlds than anyone had dared to imagine.

Paul writes in Ephesians 3:20 that God "is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us." We are like those astronomers before the image loaded, staring into what seems like darkness and assuming nothing is there. We pray small prayers into what feels like silence. We ask for a handful of stars and God has prepared galaxies.

The power Paul describes isn't distant — it is at work within us, right now, in the ordinary Tuesday of your life. What you see is never all there is. The God who packed three thousand galaxies into a grain of sand-sized patch of sky is the same God at work in your story, doing immeasurably more than your boldest prayer has ever dared to ask.