November 26, 2024 / WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PLANETS?

Hey, Calvary Fremont –

I received this question on Sunday: WHY ARE THERE SO MANY PLANETS (MILLIONS) JUST SITTING THERE?

I asked BING AI: How many planets are there in the universe? The response – it’s estimated that there are around 100 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy alone. If we assume that each star has at least one planet (a conservative estimate), there could be hundreds of billions of planets in our galaxy alone. The observable universe contains an estimated 2 trillion galaxies. If each galaxy has, on average, as many stars as the Milky Way, the number of planets in the observable universe could be staggering—potentially in the range of hundreds of billions of trillions of planets.

So, there are not millions of planets; there are possibly hundreds of billions of trillions of planets. WOW! WOW! WOW! And they are not just sitting there. We get our word ‘planet’ from the Greek word for ‘wanderer.’ The planets don’t just sit there, they move around.

Or maybe the questioner meant why are so many planets just sitting there empty, devoid of people? I don’t know. Are they devoid of life? I don’t know. As far as I know, there is no evidence of life on other planets. But if there are hundreds of billions of trillions of planets – who knows? Here’s what I do know –

THE HEAVENS ARE TELLING OF THE GLORY OF GOD; AND THEIR EXPANSE IS DECLARING THE WORK OF HIS HANDS. PSALM 19:1

The hundreds of billions of trillions of planets bring my soul to worship. I stand in awe of the majesty and the genius and the power of God. Yet mankind is a speck of a species on a speck of a planet in a speck of a solar system engulfed in a speck of a galaxy buried in the unmeasured vastness of gigantic, colossal, ever-expanding universe. David was not aware of the hundreds of billions of trillions of planets, but if he was, he still would have written the following –

WHEN I CONSIDER YOUR HEAVENS, THE WORK OF YOUR FINGERS, THE MOON AND THE STARS, WHICH YOU HAVE ORDAINED; WHAT IS MAN THAT YOU TAKE THOUGHT OF HIM, AND THE SON OF MAN THAT YOU CARE FOR HIM? PSALM 8:3-4

In the unfathomable expanse of the known Creation, in the unmeasured immensity of all that is seen and unseen, God has set His love on you! God thinks of you! God loves specks! Don’t even try to wrap your mind around that – just bow in worship before the God who created and sustains it all.

Be blessed and stay healthy and follow Jesus – Pastor Tim