Since my childhood, I’ve loved high resolution photographs of deep-sky nebula, those luminescent clouds of dust and gas in space of which such beautiful photographs can be taken, given enough time and patience and the right equipment. These can be truly breathtaking images, which bring to mind the Psalmist’s exclamation that “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” [Psalm 19:1]. I think we can learn even more from these photographs than the beauty of creation: the way they are taken can teach us something useful about the Christian life, something that can bring us closer to God himself who is the author of these beautiful things.
The first thing to realize about astrophotography is that it requires preparation: you need a telescope with a camera attachment, and you need a telescope mount that compensates for the rotation of the earth. Nobody would bother with such preparation until they knew that there was something beautiful worth seeking. These nebula aren’t generally something you can easily look up and see with the naked eye: most are simply not visible at all; a few are, such as the Orion Nebula, but to the naked eye it simply looks like a fuzzy, slightly hazy patch of light. It takes a telescope to fully capture its beauty. So it is with the Christian life: once we realize Jesus is worth seeking out, we need to prepare ourselves to look. Jesus doesn’t typically jump into our lap like an excitable puppy: being a Christian often takes effort.
A second thing to realize is that our local situations rarely make it easy. Most of us live in cities or towns with bright lights at night. Astronomers call this “light pollution”. Those lights do not make it easier to spot and photograph nebula, they compete with them. While the light they produce is much less than the light of the astronomical objects we want to capture, because they are so much closer to us, we can be blinded by them, and miss the beauty that is right there, right above us. So it is with the Christian life: the cares of our daily lives and the attractions and distractions of the world can distract us from and blind us to what is most important in the Christian life: Jesus. Astrophotography works best in “dark skies”, far away from the lights of cities or towns. The christian life can be the same way, which is why for centuries people have fled to monasteries to focus on Jesus, to escape the distractions of the world. But happily, astrophotography can happen even when there are lights around: streetlights and other light pollution can be filtered out, either with filters on the telescope that eliminate particular light frequencies characteristic of local lighting, or through software that can distinguish between the light from the stars and the light from the local environment. In the same way, the Christian life is possible even in the busy-ness of life, but we need to be diligent and insistent about filtering out distractions from what is really important.
A third thing to realize is that light from a nebula takes a long time to reach us, because it is very far away. The Orion Nebula, for example, is 1344 light-years away, which means the light we see today originated in the late 7th century. Similarly, Jesus died and rose again in the first century, a time that seems impossibly long ago to many of us. And unless we live in the middle east, we live far away from the place where these events occured. The truth is that those events in the middle east in the first century, the death and resurrection of Jesus, are as relevant today as they ever were. God is not limited by time or space, and while we are, he reaches out to us in the here and now, in the same way as the light from a nebula reaches us today. We need to remind ourselves that Christ is not limited to a particular time in history or a particular country: he is for everywhere and for always, and he is for us, and we for him.
A fourth thing is that astrophotography takes time, a great deal of time. You cannot take your cell phone out and snap a picture of the sky and expect to see the full glory of a deep-sky image: you need to point your telescope at an object for many hours. The longer you do, the more light from the nebula you capture, and the better the image. So it is with the Christian life: the more we seek Jesus and spend time in his presence, the better we understand him, the more we can imitate him, and the more like him we can become. We should be willing to put in the time: Jesus is worth it.
Finally, it’s important to remember that astrophotography is not completely within our control. A cloud can come along and obscure the sky, and there is nothing we can do about it. So it is true with the Christian life: things happen. We cannot always have it the way we want it. But here is an important difference between astrophotography and the Christian life: stars and nebulae are just there. Jesus is much more than just there, Jesus loves us and wants to save us. So we can trust him to work with us to make himself better known, to teach us what is right, and to bring us to salvation. He gives us each other, in the church, to help. We do not need to feel alone, because we are not alone. A nebula is beautiful, yes, and it speaks of God’s glory and the beauty of creation, but ultimately it is simply a beautiful thing in the sky. Jesus is beautiful, but he is so much more. He loves us. He brings us together. He wants to save us, so much so that he died on the cross to make it possible. This is a beautiful thing far beyond light and color: this is love. Let us love him back.
Agapios Theophilus
Agapios Theophilus is the "nom de plume" of a catholic layman who has loved Jesus from when, as a young boy in the 1970s, he first learned about him. His First Communion, at the age of seven, was the happiest day of his life, and he celebrates its anniversary each year. He lives in a large city with his beloved wife, two wonderful children, and an affectionate orange and white cat. He has no formal qualifications whatsoever to write about Jesus: he writes only because he has been given the great gift of knowing and loving him, and he would like others to come to know and love him too. See Agapios' posts at https://sites.google.com/view/agapios-theophilus and follow Agapios on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/a9apios
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.