I’ve used a quote in a few sermons that goes along the lines of “For each grain of sand on earth there are a million stars.”

It is unbelievable enough that I have had people challenge me as to its authenticity.  So, I decided to see if it is really genuine or if I have been guilty of the almost unforgivable sin of claiming something fictional as being factual (oh the shame).

I tracked down one of the the original sources of the quote, It was from a BBC documentary called “Space”, narrated by Sam Neill.  The quote verbatim is:

“For every grain of sand on our entire planet, there are one million stars out there in space.”

(Audio proof available here.)

How big is a million? 1 million seconds is about 1 week 4 days in time.  1 billion seconds is more than 30 years worth. 1 trillion seconds is over 31,688 years!  Okay, with that in mind…

Universetoday.com states that an average galaxy contains on average between 100 billion and 1 trillion numbers of stars.  Astronomers estimate that there are approximately 100 billion to 1 trillion galaxies in the Universe.  Which means there could be up to 1 septillion stars in the Universe (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to be precise,  though on a rather clear night one can see probably no more than 2,000 of them with the naked eye.

That’s a lot of stars.  The Universe is a very, very big place.

It’s easy to feel slightly insignificant when pondering such things, especially if one believes life is the product of billions of years of mistakes (evolution in 10 words).

The following blows my mind:

The LORD merely spoke, and the heavens were created.
He breathed the word, and all the stars were born.
(The Bible, Psalm 33:6)

What blows my mind even more, is that this Creator of the Universe is concerned about me (and you).

You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered!
I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up, you are still with me!
(The Bible, Psalm 139:13,17-18)

So the Universe is incomprehensibly huge; The Creator of it all is so powerful He simply spoke it into being; and He can’t stop thinking about me.

Or in other words, I’m incomprehensibly significant to the Creator of the Universe…

and you are too.