JEREMIAH 10:12 (NRSV) For Monday 2/22

It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.

This verse is part of a story that Jeremiah, a major prophet in the Hebrew Bible, is telling the people of Israel. He is telling them that their idols made of wood, silver and gold, are of no importance. They can do no harm, he said, and they can also do no good. The Lord is the true God, Jeremiah says, he is the living God, and he is forever.

He continues, false idols did not create heaven and earth. In fact, those idols will perish on earth and in heaven. Then he tells them of the one true God:

“It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.”

There are different places in the Bible where God is identified as the creator of the universe and all that is in it, perhaps most notably in Genesis. But this passage from Jeremiah really struck me when he said these three things. First, God made the world by his power. Second, he established the world by his wisdom. And third, “by his understanding (he) stretched out the heavens.”

The idea that God made the heavens is ancient. But Jeremiah chooses to say God “stretched out the heavens.” This actually speaks to our current day understanding of the universe. The universe is not a static creation of God. It is continually evolving, changing, and expanding. And to this day it is still being stretched out by God. One of astonomy's biggest mysteries is the continuous expansion of the universe. There are plenty of theories about this phenomenon. They think about the Why? and the How? But Jeremiah knew. God did it with his “understanding.”

If one were to attempt a trip to the “edge” of our universe, it would be an eternal trip. No sooner would you approach the edge, only to find that it was moving further away every second. The distances between every star and every galaxy grows larger every day. God is still stretching the heavens.

I don't think we will ever really know a scientific explanation of this continuous, eternal expansion of the universe. We will never understand all of this. If God's understanding was needed to create the ever-expanding universe, the stretching of the heavens, then perhaps mankind should agree to leave some things to God.

For me, it's enough to know that God did it. He is still doing it. Astronomers can see it when they try to look at the edge of the universe.