The Cross marks the spot!

What an awesome weekend I've had. We've raised money to get two of our young guys to NZ, I've spent time with some of my most precious friends here in Geelong, and Torquay Live was AMAZING last night!

I try not to bore people with the details of my life on this blog (isn't that what Facebook is for?!?!) so I'm going to skip right on to church - Torquay Live and why it was so amazing.

As I've written over the past few weeks, we're doing a kind of "unplugged" approach to Live over the month of January - mostly because so many of our church family are away at the moment. So our band has gone acoustic, we're sitting around tables, and we're watching a DVD and then sitting around and discussing it.

Last night, we watched Loui Giglio's "How Great Is Our God" - the follow up to "Indescribable". Now I thought Indescribable blew my mind, but it had NOTHING on How Great is our God! I can't recommend sitting down and watching these DVD's enough. I will give you a warning though - they're hard to get into. He's very scientific in the lead up to the blow-your-mind point...but bare with him, because it's worth it.

The thing that has blown me away through this though is two single photos.

The first is this:

What is it you ask?! It's a photo taken by the Hubble Telescope - it's the centre of the black hole in the core of the Whirlpool Galaxy - over 31 million light years away. It's one of the largest and most distant Galaxies we can find. At it's core is a black hole, and at the core of that black hole Hubble took a photo of what NASA named "X". I don't know about you but I'm pretty sure I'd call that a cross, not an X!

The second is this:

Now I probably only know of one or two people who would know what this was at a look - Liz at my church and Matt in the UK - my two scientist friends. For those of you like me, who are looking at it and saying "Okay, so I get that it's shaped like a cross, so I get the point of including it but what is it?!" It's Laminin. The most basic description of Laminin (which I needed!!!) is that it is the glue that holds our body together. It's the molecule that holds together our skin, our organs, our muscles - and without it, we would literally fall apart. Our body is made up of millions of these Laminin molecules - which means that essentially, our body is LITERALLY hold together by the cross.

Phill left us with a thought - "One of the biggest things in the universe we've been able to find and photograph points us to the cross. And...one of the smallest things we've been able to find and photograph points us to the cross." Wow!

I am at a loss as to how you can see such beautiful pictures, and not believe that you were created by a loving God. Last night, the Psalm (139:14) that says "For I know that I am Fearfully and Wonderfully Made" took on a whole new meaning.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made - and at the very core of the universe and at the very core of you - Jesus placed a cross to remind you how very loved you are!