On May 25, 1961 President John Kennedy announced plans to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. This was a very ambitious announcement because the technology did not yet exist, and the Soviet Union had just demonstrated on April 12 of that year that they were ahead of the U.S. when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in outer space. The distance from earth to the moon varies a little, but it is about 240,000 miles. The Apollo 11 spacecraft had to travel at least 7 miles per second to break free of Earth's gravitational field. That is 32.4 times as fast as the speed of sound. It took 4 days to get to the moon. It arrived on July 20, 1969, and Neil Armstrong became the first man to step foot on its surface.
Yet that distance is almost nothing compared to the distance to the sun, which is 93 million miles. Yet that distance is almost nothing comparatively. The sun is a star. The next closest star to the earth is actually a group of 3 stars called Alpha Centauri. It is 4 light years from earth. A light year is the distance light travels in one year. Light travels at over 186,000 miles per second. That means you have to travel 186,000 miles per second for 4 years to get to the next star from earth. Yet that distance is almost nothing comparatively. Astronomers estimate that there are about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy the earth is located in, and that it is about 100,000 light years across. Yet that distance is almost nothing comparatively. They also estimate there are about 100 billion galaxies in the universe. They say that the furthest part of the observable universe is 46 billion light years away from earth. Yet when the Bible records the creation of everything beyond our solar system, it uses only 5 words: “He made the stars also (Gen 1:16)”. In the original Hebrew, it is even shorter. It is only one word – kowkab.
God is eternal, which means He had no beginning and He has no end (Deut 33:27, Is 57:15, 1Tim 1:17). He created time and the means to measure it (Gen 1). He is also infinite, which means He is not bound by space which He also created (Ps 139:7-10). God is bigger than we can comprehend. Sometimes we look at problems and see that their scale in time and space is large, especially compared to us. Yet compared to God everything is short in duration and small in size. There is nothing too big for God, so we should pray with this knowledge. It doesn’t take a vast amount of faith when we compare our “big” problems to God. We should not just dismiss certain things because they have been that way for so long or because they are too big for us. God’s power is endless, and He does not get tired (Is 40:28-31, Mt 28:18, Rev 19:6). God asked Abraham and Jeremiah if there is anything too hard for Him (Gen 18:14, Jer 32:27). This was a rhetorical question. The obvious answer is no.
God also created the microscopic world that man knew nothing about until the invention of the microscope in about 1590. As microscopes became more powerful, man began to see just how much is really going on in this tiny world, and just how small particles really are. The electron microscope can magnify objects 50 million times. A light microscope can only magnify about 2,000 times. The smallest subatomic particles ever observed are quarks and electrons. A single strand of DNA is able to store and communicate more information more efficiently than a Cray supercomputer. God put the instructions for life and reproduction in this tiny form in the nucleus of a cell. Cell theory did not really begin to develop until the 1800s, and Darwin admitted that if cells proved to be complicated, it would disprove his theory. Well, cells are very complicated, and irreducibly so. God created this tiny world that we cannot see with our eyes, but He knows everything going on in every cell in every living thing on earth. There is nothing too big for God, and there is nothing too small for God. We should not think that our “little” problems don’t matter to the God of the universe. He cares about the details of our lives, and He is not bothered when we pray to Him. He wants us to. God sent the prophet Elijah to a poor widow who wasn’t even a Jew and supplied her with food during a drought (1Ki 17). Jesus mentioned this (Lk 4:24-26). The first miracle the Lord performed as He began His ministry after His baptism was simply to save a bride and groom embarrassment at having run out of beverages at their wedding (Jn 2:1-11). God cares about us and out “little” problems too. All we need is faith the size of a tiny mustard seed (Mt 17:20).