Betelgeuse

Did you ever lie on your back and gaze at the clouds while you tried to identify their shapes as they shifted and changed? Perhaps you’ve tried the same with the night sky, playing a sort of interstellar join-the-dots in your imagination? It may not seem productive, but we could all do with time spent in wonder, thinking about, and appreciating this amazing gift of life. Wherever you find yourself on the stress-scale, why not take a few minutes to do just that.

I read something that sent me on just such a mental expedition through the galaxy. It concerns Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is that bright star that forms the shoulder of the constellation of Orion (the one with the belt of three stars). It has the world of astronomy in a bit of a spin right now. You see, it’s losing brightness at a rather spectacular rate. As of the most recent information from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in northern Chile, it is has been reduced to just 36% of it’s normal brightness, in just a matter of months. Unsurprisingly, nobody is sure what the problem is.

Betelgeuse is probably at least 500 to 700 light years away, depending on whose measurements you go with. This large degree of variation in estimates is understandable considering how far a light year is. It’s the distance that light travels, at a speed of 300 000 km every second, for a year. Multiply that by 500 and you can see that how it may be tricky to measure accurately. This vast distance also means that we shouldn’t blame Eskom for Betelgeuse’s loss of brightness, as tempting as that may be.

Stars are huge, and there are more of them than we can number. The more technologically advanced we become, the bigger the estimates become. When you think of these sorts of scales and the majesty of these celestial bodies, you could be forgiven for feeling very small. On the other hand, you could be overwhelmed by how immense our Creator is. 

Thinking about God, as the Creator of all the stars, puts our problems into perspective. It may not take away the pain, but it does remind us that we can trust Him to handle anything we go through, no matter how big. It shows that He has the power to help, but how do we know that He wants to? As Easter approaches, think about God creating this entire universe, and then contemplate His decision to become human, in the person of Jesus Christ, in a body like ours, to subject Himself to our scale of problems. This is a God who knows how we suffer, and knows how to save us. No problem is too great, and no person too small (John 3:16).