If I say the word "Hubble" - how many of you would know what I’m referring to?

The Hubble Space Telescope was sent into orbit some years ago by NASA. This orbiting observatory floats outside of the distorting influence of the earth’s atmosphere and allows us to look further out into the universe than we ever have before.

Awesome pictures come back. You can find them on various web sites.

Like this one showing a swirling star cloud.

Or this cloud of gas left over from the explosion of a dying star.
 

Or these huge, towering clouds of gas that are the embryos of stars yet to be born.

With the hubble space telescope we can now see objects in outer space that are 2 billion times fainter than what the unaided eye can see from earth.

As the Hubble peers into the darkest regions of space, astronomers are discovering not only more stars, but galaxies. Millions, even billions of galaxies, each made of millions or billions, or even millions of billions of stars. We see evidence of not just stars, but whole galaxies colliding with force and energy we can’t imagine – galaxies some 13 to 16 billion light years away.

As Christians, not only are we reminded again of how small and limited we are, but also how incredibly majestic and powerful God Almighty is. The bible says in Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after nighty they display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19:1-4 NIV

Looking up on a star lit when I go camping, or sitting behind my computer looking at images from Hubble, makes me wonder. If God is behind this, not only designing it, creating it, but also sustaining it, then God is a very very busy God. How then, being so busy, can He do it all?

Tell me, don’t you find that a person can only handle so much? I’m one of these guys that sometimes forgets he doesn’t have a big "S" tatoo’d on his chest. I’m not superman.

Leap tall buildings? I trip coming in the door. Faster than a speeding bullet? I’m lucky to get to the phone before it stops ringing. More powerful than a locomotive? I have my hands full with a shovel full of snow.

Look at the universe --
        All those huge, powerful forces swirling around.
                A very busy God
                        And me.

How could God, his holy hands full with all that stuff –
        how could He possibly have time for little, insignificant me?

Actually, I don’t even have to look up. Looking around will do.
Hundreds of thousand of people suffering in Sudan, Chechnya, Kosovo.
The babies being born, the people dying, the billions of folk just living and doing their thing —
        and I’m just one,
                one little tiny speck among them all.

Even if God did notice, He’d probably be distracted in a moment, all these others clamouring for His attention and energy.

Have you ever wondered the same thing?

I’m going to ask Rob to come forward and read words of Isaiah 49, words spoken to a whole nation of people wondering about this.

The first people to hear these words were feeling very much on the outside. Like God had left them standing on the front porch while answering the proverbial heavenly phone regarding some other cosmically urgent item.
        Once they had been the object of His intense love, now they were forgotten. The nation of Israel had been brought from infancy in Egypt, out of slavery, through some excruciatingly difficult years in the Sinai wilderness, and into Palestine. The land was carved up and divided along family lines. It became a secure home, a safe space – a space given them by God.
        Things were far from that way now, however.
        Israel had gone two-timing on the Lord, continual spiritual adultery with one idol seductress after another. And to shake them back to their sense the Lord had to evict them from the Promised Land. Using the army of Babylon God knocked down their empty dream house of cards. Jerusalem was destroyed. Villages torched. The people taken into captivity.

        The shock was enormous.
        A wake up call? Absolutely – and every ounce of it needed, for the people were closer to being in a spiritual coma then being spiritual sleep.
        But it did the trick.

        As they come to and realize what has happened they responded the way a foolish adulterer will when his spouse has packed up and moved out along with the kids – "Oh man, what have I done? Now I’m all alone. I’ve been dropped."
Their own fault or not, bottom line is that now they’re all alone.
        The riches of the relationship - gone.
        Hope for reconciliation - out the window.

        The future - slate grey bleakness.

                Forget it.
                Just forget it - it’s over.
                        Completely over.
                        He’s put us right out of His mind.

To these forsaken, dejected, hopeless people with heavy hearts and sagging spirits comes the amazing word from God -
                I will NOT forget you!!

And the image of a mother is used.
        Sure, sometimes there is estrangement in families. Tragic, but real. Yet even in circumstances like that, when thousands of miles may separate mother and child, there are very few mothers who can erase the picture of their child’s face from their memory. The bond is too strong.
                This is one she carried; birthed; nursed.
                        Forget?
                        NEVER!

Estranged children know that if they have been separated from their family they generally stand a better chance of reconciling if they go through Mom. Bonds tend to be stronger there.
        That picture of maternal bonding, says God, is how it is between us and Him.

Of course there is always someone to say – "But listen to this...."
And they come up with an exception.
        A mother that is mentally unstable.
        A aged woman suffering from Alzheimer’s.
And it’s as if Holy God anticipates that with the second part of His love poem;
               I have your named carved right here on the palm of my hand.

Not the way some of us do in school when we get an assignment or need a phone number for later at home.
        We grab a pen and write it – where? On our hand. And then mom gets all ticked when we get home and by accident rub ink all over the place.

God doesn’t take a pen.
He, so to speak, grabs a penknife and carves our names into His hand.
        Can’t rub it off or wash it away.
        It will be there – always.

That was God’s promise to Israel.
It remains His promise for us today.
        A promise that we need to go back to time and again.
        For there are the times in our lives when it seems as though the whole world is lined up against us,
        as though we are left to move forward alone; and every step is through thick, waist deep mud.

It happens when we stand at a graveside.
We experience it in the middle of the night while lying in a hospital bed.
It overwhelms while on the bus to school knowing that there won’t be many.... or any friends there to welcome us and invite to join in.
When we’re wrestling with depression.
Or going back every day to that two-bit job.
Or when everyone else is invited to the party and we’re left home alone.

"I’m forgotten." – we think.
Hear His promise –
"My child - you’re right here.
        Your name is carved on my hand.
        Your face is etched in my mind.
        I will never forget you.
Your friends may wander off in new life directions and your relationship fade
        but surely, I will be with you always.
Those around may become distracted by problems and challenges of their own
        but no mountain is too high or valley too low that you will be beyond me"

Next time you go out on a clear, starry night I want you to look up.
Look up and see the works of God’s hand.
And then, in your mind, I want you to see His hand. A bloody hand. A hand with your name carved on it.
        A hand that also carries a scar – a nail scar.
        It is the nail scar on the hand of Jesus.

Romans 5.8 says that God demonstrated His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
        On the cross.
        Our sins on Him.

He did it so that we would NEVER be strangers in God’s heavenly home.
That our place with our Holy God would be forever assured.

Romans 8.34 says that Jesus is in heaven at the right hand of the Father, interceding -- praying -- for us.
        Think of that – your name and well-being raised day after day after day by Jesus before the Heavenly Father.
                Never forgotten!!

Our names, our faces, our well-being – never forgotten.
But our sins – the slip-ups, half-truths, blow-ups, short falls, moral lapses, rebellious moments, frustrating errors and deviant chapters.......
        Psalm 103 says: "He forgives all your sins.... as far as east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us."

Do you understand?
        The times when we forget God;
        The times when we turn our back on Him;
        The times when we become distracted and preoccupied by nonsense and worthless matters;
        The times when our faith fades;
                These are the times that God forgets.

Oh - not that He doesn’t actually remember them.
But in the way He plans, and in the way He treats us, and in His affection for us, and His care that surrounds us -
        - because of the nail-scar on the hands of His Holy Son He acts and loves and responds and feels as though these crazy, sinful chapters in our lives had never occurred!

Gone!
Forever gone from the eternal record!
 
 

And God’s Holy power – Forever Present!
His love? Forever round us!
His hands? Forever holding us!

Perhaps that doesn’t take away the pain of losing a loved one.
It still makes impending surgery a major hurdle to overcome.
Struggling with an inadequate job remains a challenge.
        But we’re not facing these times alone.

I’m going to invite you to join me in a time of prayer.
But before we do, let’s finish this meditation time off with a song - from our hearts singing straight to the heart of God
        with full assurance that we’re being heard:
                PH# 493 Precious Lord, Take My Hand