“God’s promises are like the stars: the darker the night, the brighter they shine.” —D. Nicholas
How many stars are in the observable universe? Astronomers guess about 200 billion trillion. Actually, “the host of heaven cannot be numbered” by us (Jer 33:22), though God has named them all! Yet at their creation, we read just five words: “He made the stars also” (Gen 1:16). Now the Lord has some astronomy questions for Job. “Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion?…Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs?” (Job 38:31- 32). The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters (over 1,000 stars), are a star cluster in the constellation of the Bull, “all drifting together in the same direction,” says Robert J. Trumpler. “This leaves no doubt that the Pleiades are not a temporary or accidental agglomeration of stars, but… bound together by a close kinship.” Orion the Hunter, on the other hand, is having its belt loosened. Its stars, although they presently form “an almost perfect straight line…about equally spaced and of the most striking beauty,” says astronomer Garrett P. Serviss, they are moving in different directions and, “In the course of time,…the two right-hand stars…will approach each other…but the third…will drift away eastward, so that the ‘Belt’ will no longer exist.” What of Arcturus, the Bear, with his 52 additional “cubs”? He’s thousands of times the mass of, and traveling twenty times faster than, our sun (257 mi/sec)! “Arcturus is a runaway,” says Charles Burckhalter. The “combined attraction of all the stars we know cannot stop him or even turn him in his path.” Only God can guide the mighty stars—and all of us! Here’s the startling link: “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He counts the number of the stars; He calls them all by name” (Ps 147:3-4). Stars and souls safely in His hand!