God has a plan for your life. God didn’t allow you to be born for no purpose. God created you so that you can fulfill His purpose to the end. You may think that there can be no God knowing about your existence, but the verse above says differently. The verse above says that His thoughts are “for you.” This implies that God not only thought enough about you to allow you to be born, but that you are constantly in His thoughts. You are important to God; don’t let anyone tell you differently.
The difference between the world and God is that God has a Plan and the pathway of the world leads to the unknown. The biggest reason you should follow the LORD’s plan for your life is because He knows where His life will bring you, to a life of peace. Too many Christians are following the way of the world thinking that it is better, but what they don’t know is where that pathway ends.
But what if there is no God?
It is of course possible that there is nobody, but the consequences are that we would then be the accidental by-product of “nature”, the result of dead matter plus energy plus time plus chance. There would be no particular reason for our existence. All we’d face is death and if there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we’d await our unavoidable execution. It means that life itself would be absurd, without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.
If each individual person passes out of existence when he/she dies, then what meaning can be given to this life? Does it really matter whether we ever existed at all? Our life may have been important relative to certain other people or events, but what is the particular significance of any of these?
Some very few people in history are still remembered, like Alexander the Great, Julius Cesar, Charlemagne, Albert Einstein and so on, but the vast majority of us is totally forgotten even after a few generations. All our family and friends and contemporaries have passed on as well and there may not even be a tombstone, or a cemetery left to remember us.
Obviously, anyone is free to believe whatever, but the option of atheism is a hopeless and dark philosophy of life, in our opinion.
So if there is a God, would He even know about my existence?
Oh Lord, my God,
When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works
Thy hands have made
I see the stars
I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout
The universe displayed
Then sings my soul, My Saviour, God, to Thee
How great thou Art
How great thou Art!
(Christian hymn based on a Swedish traditional melody and a poem written by Carl Gustav Boberg (1859–1940), published in Mönsterås, Sweden 1885.)
This presupposes that God exists and is. To be “God”, however, He must also be the creator and sustainer of the Universe and be present everywhere, even beyond it. If there was one single spot He would/could not be or know about, He would immediately cease to be God.
Have you ever looked up at the clear sky some night and counted the stars or wondered how many there are, like in the picture above? Well, definitely more than you could ever count! In our solar system, there is 1 star (the sun) and 8 known planets, including the one we live on, the earth. David Kornreich, professor at Ithaca College in New York, the founder of the “Ask an Astronomer” service at Cornell University, estimates that there are at least 100 billion stars like the sun in our galaxy, the “Milky Way”. The total number of galaxies, however, as shown by some imaging experiments performed by the Hubble Space Telescope, is estimated at about 2 trillion.
Using the Milky Way as our model, we can multiply the number of stars in a typical galaxy (100 billion) by the number of galaxies in the universe (2 trillion):
The answer is an absolutely astounding number. There are approximately 200 billion trillion stars in the universe. Or, to put it another way, 200 sextillion (2 x 1023).
That’s 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!
The number is so big, it goes way past our imagination, doesn’t it?
Kornreich emphasized that this number is likely a gross underestimation, as more detailed looks at the universe will show even more galaxies and all these stars may have more planets, not even counted here…
But not only the number of stars, also the size of the universe is unimaginable. Who can tell where it ends? What would be beyond it then? Amazingly, there is order in all this and there are striking similarities between the macro and the microcosmos, as depicted in this short video, called the “Cosmic Eye”:
An ‘awesome wonder’ indeed! What an immensely creative and powerful being our God must be. Some people erroneously conclude therefore, that He must probably be infinitely far away from us little creatures on this tiny planet, in an insignificant solar system and just too occupied in managing those 200 sextillion stars, to even be able to see us and hear our seemingly small concerns. But no, He is right here with us. God is not bound by space or time. If you are a Christian, He is even inside of you through the Holy Spirit. You can’t get any closer to God than that! But in any case, He listens to every thought and word of yours. Our God is an awesome God!
O Lord, you have examined my heart
and know everything about me.
You know when I sit down or stand up.
You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
You see me when I travel
and when I rest at home.
You know everything I do.
You know what I am going to say
even before I say it, Lord.
You go before me and follow me.
You place your hand of blessing on my head.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too great for me to understand!
I can never escape from your Spirit!
I can never get away from your presence!
If I go up to heaven, you are there;
if I go down to the grave, you are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning,
if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there your hand will guide me,
and your strength will support me.
I could ask the darkness to hide me
and the light around me to become night—
but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
Darkness and light are the same to you.
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.
You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
You saw me before I was born.
Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
before a single day had passed.
How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
They cannot be numbered!
I can’t even count them;
they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up,
you are still with me!
Psalm 139:1-18