(Photo from NASA)

Almost 28 billion light years away is an atom, a proton, a quark, a….miniscule piece of near nothingness.  It is unlike any other. God knows it is there and has His eye on it. From where you stand, give or take a cosmic smidge, that is 168,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles.  Give or take. Feel free to check my math.

I find it comforting to know that God knows every hair on my head –ooops, just lost another – and no sparrow falls without Him knowing. In a society that emphasizes social media friends, virtual friends, and so on, most of us are not known, understood, empathized with, cared for, attended to, etc. by others on a consistent, regular, unselfish, loving way. Welcome to the human race; current conditions exacerbate human tendencies. We are unknown; but, we are not.  We are known to God in infinitesimal detail.

There are no two people, cells, leaves, animals, molecules, snowflakes, water drops, blades of grass…that are the same. None of us can keep track of much in our lives – “Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail,” according to Henry David Thoreau – yet God holds all the details of the complicated, unique, expansive Creation in a single thought. I find that to be encouraging and comforting, even as struggle to remember where I put my keys.