The tire swing at our playground is no ordinary tire swing. It looks the same as every other tire swing, nothing more than a large rubber donut held aloft by thick metal chains. But to my boys, this rubber donut is a powerful rocket ship that has transported them throughout our solar system. They have visited each of the planets, dodging asteroids and battling war hungry aliens along the way.
A week ago, my four-year-old son asked if we could visit a new planet, one that we haven’t traveled to yet. I told him that we had already been to all eight of the planets, that there weren’t any new ones left for us to visit. He began to argue with me,
“Yes there are,” he said.
“No, there are not,” I countered, “there are eight planets and we have been to them all already.”
“There are more than eight planets,” he argued.
“No there aren’t,” I informed him, reminding him of the kid’s book we read, There’s No Place Like Space by Tish Rabe.
Then he looked at me, huge brown eyes firm and sincere and said,
“My God is a big God, I bet He made more than eight planets, we just haven’t discovered them yet.”
When thinking about the world around us, how often do we fall into systematic mindsets? A mindset, in my case, that spilled out a sterile list of memorized facts, that in fact, took little of my mind at all. My son, on the other hand, was thinking about the galaxy with an open mind full of wonder.
“The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
day to day pours out speech,
and night to night reveals knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words,
whose voice is not heard.
Their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them he has set a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber,
and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy.
Its rising is from the end of the heavens,
and its circuit to the end of them,
and there is nothing hidden from its heat.” (Psalm 19:1-6 ESV)
The very skies, the vast galaxies surrounding us and all within, are crying out to us, begging us to explore the depths of their beauty and majesty, hoping beyond hope that we will glorify the only thing more beautiful and more majestic than them…their Creator. Day after day, night after night they stand as loud witnesses to their awesome God, in a language that every man, woman, and child of every nation and tongue can understand.
Yet how often do the skies weep as we acknowledge their beauty but not His? As we boil their majesty down to lists and facts meant to be memorized and forget the wonder that leads us to Him?
My son did not forget. I was teaching him about science. He was remembering the One from whom all science was born, the One whom it was created to glorify.
Rachel S. Bell, Author 
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