PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

To state the obvious, I am not an astronomer. Perhaps a retired lobbyist like me looks at the stars once in while, but without expertise.

So, it is that I have become very interested lately in information provided by the pastor of the church my wife and I often attend in La Quinta, California, The Church at The Red Door.

The pastor, Jeff Cranford, is a former golf pro who became a Christian pastor. He has used information about the Milky Way and other galaxies to illustrate that, for him, there is no question but that God created our universe and that, in fact, God exists.

He said it was not possible for him to believe that the enormity of creation could happen by some kind of strange, as he called it, “spontaneous combustion.”

After hearing Cranford discuss one of his favorite topics, galaxies, I did a little research myself, if you can call going on-line “doing research.”

Here is a brief summary of what I found.

“The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) estimates there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. A recent German super-computer simulation estimates that the number may be as high as 500 billion.

“The methods used to achieve such a vast number vary, and, therefore, results could vary, too. Also, as new and improved technology becomes available, astronomers can detect fainter objects that were not seen before. The objects that have come into view will change the estimated number of galaxies, increasing them many fold.

“For example, in 1999 the HST estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe, and, recently, with the new camera, HST has observed 3,000 visible galaxies, which is twice as much as the telescope observed before with the old camera.”

So, back to the Milky Way. How large is it?

The disk of the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 light years in diameter and about 1,000 light years thick. Our galaxy contains about 200 billion stars.

And, how long would it take to get across the galaxy?

If you could ride a light beam from one side of the disk to the other, it would take 200,000 years to span the distance. If you could drive across and average 60 miles an hour, it would take more than two trillion years. That’s about 150 times greater than the age of the universe, which is estimated to be about 14 billion years.

There are many other reasons to come to a belief that God exists, perhaps even better ones, but just this one, for me, defies judgment on some basis other than that a higher power – God – created it. To believe somehow that this galaxy – and all others (billions of them) beyond it – just came into being strikes me as fanciful.

For me, I believe in God’s handiwork, but can I prove beyond a shadow of doubt that God is the creator? No.

What matters in all of this is that individuals must come to a position where they choose to believe in God, a decision which involves things they cannot see or touch. It’s called faith. They have to come to this decision on their own. The inverse also is true – individuals could come to a decision not to consider whether God exists or to reject any notion that he does, on their own.

I prefer the “God as creator” reality, plus the way he provides for all of us, through what Jesus did on the cross, to have a real, personal relationship with Him that will last for eternity.

Speaking of something impossible for the human mind to understand, there’s that phrase – that will last for eternity.

As the song says, using very good words to illustrate how God reaches out to us to provide salvation, “God provides a bridge across the great divide. God provides a cross to bridge the great divide.” The “divide” is what exists between us, as failed human beings and a perfect. Jesus bridged that divide.

My friendly advice is to investigate whether God exists. If you do, you might come to the same decision Cranford did a number of years ago – yes, God does exist.