The Insight Timer app contains an almost endless supply of guided meditations to choose from. Mostly I use the app as a timer for silent meditation, but I do scroll through the guided meditations. Occasionally I listen to ones that pique my interest.
Today I noticed one whose preview said something like, "Trust the universe." I wonder what that statement meant. Maybe "universe" is a non-religious, non-churchy name for the great and awesome mysteries that surround us. Really, I don't know. I should have paid a little more attention to it. I can't find it on the app now.
The universe is indeed a vast mystery, more than capable of provoking a great deal of awe, but it's a finite mystery. Scientists generally agree that in eons to come, the universe will fizzle and flatten out. Everything that has been, is, and will be will cease to exist. That includes us, everything we've worked for, and everyone who will remember us after we're gone. If there is not a mystery greater than the cosmos in which we live, a mystery that the passage of time and expansion space cannot corrode, then in the long run nothing really matters.
Some people deal with the inevitable end of all things by not dealing with it. "There's enough right here and right now to give my life meaning and purpose. It doesn't matter that billions of years from now the stars are going to burn out." But that's just another way of saying, "Someday I won't matter, and the things that matter to me won't matter."
That's not good news. There is a gloominess to a wholly secular outlook on life that, while usually ignored or unacknowledged, is undeniable. I wonder if that gloominess is the catalyst for the restlessness and dissatisfaction that seems so pervasive in our otherwise comfortable society.
The good news is that there is a mystery more wonderful than the cosmos! We have caught a glimpse of this eternal and glorious mystery. Jesus Christ is where time and eternity meet. When he unites us to himself through faith in him, he assures us that we matter, and what we do matters, now and forever.
Join us on Sundays at 9:00 or 11:00, and let's fall more and more deeply into love and praise and awe of the mystery of all mysteries. He's worthy of our compete trust.