Infinity in a Keyhole

I learned something amazing a few weeks ago. I can't stop thinking about it. It dogs my steps, this new truth - it whispers in my ear, and tugs at my shirttail, and nudges me until every now and then I have to stop and let it fill me again, and every time it takes my breath away.

Imagine you are standing outside on a clear night, the moon not yet risen, the stars clear and bright. Find a patch of sky that's pitch black – not even the faintest star in sight. Nothing, right? Pure, empty space.

Ah, my friend, not so. We have been proven wrong. And the truth is incredible.

Twenty years ago, the astronomers who manage the Hubble telescope asked the same question: is there anything out there, in those black spaces? And they decided to focus the telescope at the very darkest and emptiest area in the night sky. At, to be precise, just a tiny speck of the night. How small? Imagine holding a dime up at arm's length. The area they focused at would be about the size of Roosevelt's eye.

Got that image in your mind? That tiny keyhole, in the middle of the night sky? They pointed the Hubble at that one spot for ten days, letting in photons that had traveled for billions of years. And at the end of ten days, when they processed the image, this was what they found in that “empty” space:

Galaxies. Galaxy upon galaxy, each invisible to the naked eye. That seemingly empty bit of space was actually teeming with thousands of galaxies, each composed of hundreds of billions of stars. Spirals and starbursts, unfolding, some even colliding, some just in their infancy, some at their end. Thousands of them, in just that one tiny patch of sky.

When I think about it, I feel like the man in that medieval drawing, poking his head out through the dome of the sky, staring in astonishment at the heavens. I'm a child, peering through a keyhole at infinity. The whole night sky and all the stars we see above us, fascinating as they are, are simply all my feeble eyes can see - the small truth of the close, while far beyond my sight reality is a billion times more than I ever imagine.

As the psalmist says, “Such truth is too lofty for me; I cannot grasp it.” My eyes and mind can only reach as far as – well, as far as my outstretched hand, gazing at the eye on that coin. But suddenly a window has opened in the heavens, and I can send my mind out into the infinite, and cross that unfathomable distance in all directions all around me, far, far away. I have glimpsed it, that realm of wonders, and I will never be the same.

When my mind snags on the little things, or, for that matter, the large, I walk outside and look up at the sky. I reach my hand up and point at a spot, and think again about that marvel, just beyond my sight. I shrink, as I dwell on it – I feel myself diminishing to nearly nothingness. Yet I think I do not mind being so small. I stand in awe, like a child gazing at the gods. Ah! I sigh, and shake my head in wonder.

Next time the clamor of life leaves you drained and worries crowd too close, try this. Take a moment to go outside and look up. Find the darkest patch of sky you can, reach up, and point at that speck of seemingly empty space. Take a deep breath and let your mind soar heavenward. Peer through the keyhole - and out into the miracle.