I’d like to say I first went there through reading Pascal’s Pensees. Barring that, the next best choice would be the adventures of Antman. Truth be told, my fascination with this truth began with a scene in a movie I probably shouldn’t have seen, back in junior high. There, Donald Sutherland, playing a professor at a fictional college, explained to his stoned student acolytes first, that the universe could be so big that we, our planet, galaxy could all fit on the fingernail of an even bigger person. Second, he pointed out that the inverse was true as well, that we might have an entire universe contained inside our fingernail. Mind blown.
The truth is that the known universe is 46 billion light years across. Beyond what is known is likely more of the same. And it’s growing. That’s mind boggling enough. What is even more so is that the universe is as small as it is big. That is, just as we can traverse wider and wider spaces, so we can dive into deeper and deeper spaces. The quantum realm just keeps getting smaller.
Time was that science knew that the atom could not be divided; it was the smallest possible thing. Then science discovered the three parts of the atom, the electron, proton and neutron. These, we were told, were the smallest things. Then they discovered sub-sub-atomic particles, then sub-sub-sub atomic particles and eventually lost their confidence that they had reached, or ever would reach cosmological bottom.
The universe, the unfathomably large and expanding universe is not big enough to do its job. It needs a smallness that is just as big. These twins, expanse and “inspanse” exist together to make manifest the glory of the living God. Planets perform their orbital dances, just as electrons do. Solar systems twirl, just as quarks do. Galaxies pirouette just like charms do. The dance, from a bottom that can’t be reached to a top that can’t be measured, is the outpouring of the very beauty of God.
Beauty, as best as I am able to define its ineffable wonder, is complexity harmonized. The relationship between this galaxy and the next, between matter and dark matter is incomprehensible to us. The interconnectedness of gluons and strange, up and down and electrons is living magic. But wait, there’s more. Those galaxies and the stars therein, they are made of dancing sub-atomic particles. There is a never ending dance inside the never ending dance. The two dances dance. Harmony is harmonized.
Well, so? So we worship. So we praise. So we wonder in awe. So we look forward to a boundless future when we can explore all the glories of His creation. So we move through our days not weighed down by the nauseating sameness of strip malls and interstates but gasping at the fireworks of reality. So we scoff at the cheap, garish baubles the devil seeks to seduce us with. So we sleep like children dreaming of sugar plums, knowing He’s got the whole world, and you and me brother, in His hands.