Colossians 1:16-17
For by him 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. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
If you Google “What holds matter together?” you will end up with 615,000,000 results that all come to the same basic conclusion: Scientists are not really sure. If you broaden the question to ask why the universe does not simply fly apart, you get something like this:
“The universe is one big whirligig, composed of planets, stars, and galaxies that produce centrifugal force as they spin. What keeps all this stuff from shooting outward? Gravity. But there’s a problem: All the physical matter known to scientists couldn’t generate enough gravity to keep the universe from flying apart. Physicists have a name for the unobserved particles that presumably account for the remaining gravity we feel: dark matter.”
Re-read that last line as they consider “unobserved particles that presumably account” for why everything is not just flying off into oblivion. The human race has come to know so much…yet there remains enormous questions like this one that evade our understanding. Could it be that the Sunday School answer is the best answer?
“…and in him all things hold together.”
Behind every fascinating fact of creation lies the absolute genius of a Creator, and as Paul writes so beautifully, that Creator is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Rather than trying to capture all that these two verses mean, I think it would be more appropriate to just list six amazing facts for you to consider…in light of the fact that the one who created it all and holds it all together is the very personal Savior who knows you, loves you, and died for you. Here they are:
- Comets have vapor trails up to 10,000 miles long. If you could capture all that vapor, and put it in a bottle, the amount of vapor actually present in the bottle would take up less than 1 cubic inch of space.
- Saturn’s rings are 500,000 miles in circumference, but only about a foot thick.
- If the sun were the size of a beachball and put on top of the Empire State Building, the nearest group of stars would be as far away as Australia.
- The earth travels around the sun about eight times the speed of a bullet fired from a gun.
- There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the earth.
- A single human chromosome contains twenty billion bits of information. How much information is that? If written in ordinary books, in ordinary language, it would take about four thousand volumes.
“How encouraging to know that the eternal God who sustains the entire universe is also watching over you. No detail of your life is too small for His concern; no circumstance is too big for His sovereign control.” – Pastor John MacArthur
Amen and Amen.
