Eternity and the Journey of the JWT

By Barbara Anne Radtke

Pictured here is the first “reveal” from the James Webb telescope. How does it strike you when you look at it? It reminds me of a Christmas card of the star of Bethlehem with smaller stars accompanying it in the firmament. Instead, I learned it is a speck of the universe where each twinkling entity is a galaxy. As David Von Drehle commented in The Washington Post, “And because light travels at a constant speed, seeing further in distance is the same as looking more deeply back in time. The image is a picture from 4.6 billion years ago.” I cannot wrap my head around such vastness, comprehend time of this magnitude, and fathom these kind of numbers.

My childhood religious education, influenced by the Greeks as much as by the Bible, often used words like eternity and infinity: God is eternal; God’s love for us is boundless. As a theologian, I continue the practice: Through Jesus, there is infinite grace. “The son is eternal” is the response to the Arians’ controversial claim that “there was a time when he was not.” I often use eternal, infinite, boundless, endless, and limitless to stake a Christian claim. I rarely give a second thought to how awesome and inspiring the claim really is. It took these first photos from the James Webb telescope for me to think about those words twice. “I am going to be more careful when I use these words now,” I said to my maybe, almost agnostic friend. “If the distance, the time, the vastness which can be measured and has a limit is so awe-inspiring, just think,” she replied, “the claim that God is bigger and greater is even more awesome.” Yes, just think.

What thoughts did the first photos from the James Webb telescope inspire in you, dear reader?

Response by Kathy Hendricks

Like you, Barbara, I was awestruck by the photos from the James Webb telescope. Learning about the multiple galaxies visible in the photo was even more astounding. It certainly puts our daily concerns in perspective. There is indeed a big and beautiful world way beyond what we know.

Your comments make me rethink my easy-going use of huge concepts, such as infinity and universal. It also pulls me up short when attempting to place limits around the Divine. Looking back a short distance into those incredible photos, we might pause around the 8th century BCE to revisit the words of the prophet: “’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’" declares the LORD. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9). Now that we have such an in-depth look at the “heavens”, we can start to recognize what it means to talk about the vastness of the universe.