A week or so ago I was alerted to a video (https://vimeo.com/275908702) that focused on the amazing creative power of God, both in terms of the massive size of the universe as well as the incredibly small world of molecules and atoms. It may be helpful here at the start to remember that we count from million to billion to trillion to quadrillion to quintillion to sextillion.

So, here are ten things that should leave you in awe of your God.

(1) On a clear night, perhaps best in the desert, the human eye can see upwards of 5,000 stars. That may seem like a lot until you realize that the number of stars in our Milky Way galaxy is approximately 400,000,000,000 (400 billion). Some would place the number a bit lower, but certainly not less than 100,000,000,000 (100 billion).

(2) Although that many stars may in itself be overwhelming, we must remember that our galaxy is only one of approximately 2,000,000,000,000 (2 trillion galaxies). Of course, this estimate is based on what is in the observable universe. What we can currently discern, largely through the Hubble Telescope, should not be taken as the limit of what is actually present.

(3) Now, for the sake of our analysis, let’s dial it down to the a much more conservative estimate and draw our conclusion based on only 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) galaxies. That’s a whole lot less than 2 trillion! OK, if we multiply only 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) galaxies times 10,000,000,000 (10 billion stars in each one), and 10 billion stars is an extremely low, conservative estimate, we come to 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 1 sextillion stars in the universe!

(4) Now consider all the grains of sand on the earth. There are approximately 135,000 grains in one cubic inch of sand and 235,000,000 in one cubic foot. That’s a lot of sand!

(5) There are approximately 220,000 miles of coast line on earth and 6,000,000 square miles of desert.

(6) There are, therefore, approximately 7 billion billion (that’s not a typographical error; the repetition is intentional) individual grains of sand on the earth, or 7.5 x 10 to the 18th power! Much too big to fit on a single page!

(7) In spite of this staggering number of grains of sand on the earth, there are approximately 10 times as many stars in the universe as there are grains of sand on the earth.

(8) A single grain of sand is approximately 0.04 of an inch. Yet, in one grain of sand there are 500 billion billion atoms (again, that’s an intentional repetition). That means there are more atoms in one grain of sand than the total number of grains of sand on the earth!

(9) There are in one drop of water 1,700,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 1.7 quintillion) individual H2O molecules.

(10) Just a few drops of water contain more molecules than the total number of stars in the entire universe.

Where did it all come from? What could possibly account for the unfathomably massive size of the universe as well as the incredibly tiny world of sub-atomic particle physics? The answer is given by Paul in Colossians 1:16 – “for by him [that is, by or through the Son of God, Jesus Christ] all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him.”

I know this is about ten things that reflect on the creative power and majesty of Jesus Christ, but let’s look at one more. Most of us wake up and go through our day without ever taking note of the sun, except perhaps to complain about it either being obscured by clouds or too hot to stay outside very long. What we rarely if ever consider is the fact that hundreds of billion billion billion billion (that’s 10 with 38 zeros) fusion reactions take place every second in our sun. On top of that, more than 400,000,000 tons of hydrogen are being converted into helium every second in the heart of the sun. And our sun is only one, quite small, star among the billions and billions and trillions and trillions of others throughout the universe, all of which undergo a seemingly endless inferno of chemical and nuclear reactions.

And Jesus does it all! How true are the words of the psalmist: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).