Faith Hope & Fiction

By Bryant Burroughs

What if there are many worlds?
            Astronomically many.
            Innumerably many.
Our emboldened eyes and ears
peer and listen far across the universe,
a feat that leaves us amazed and dismayed
at finding an endless family of galaxies,
billions of galaxies, each teeming with stars.
Even parts of the sky long thought empty
are brimming with celestial lights.
We human occupants of the Earth,
who once thought it was flat
and the sun orbited around it,
now hear the echoes of the Big Bang.

Not bad for occupants of a tiny, blue planet
orbiting a nondescript but life-giving star
located on a sweeping arm of a common
galaxy we’ve named the Milky Way.
We’re not the center of our solar system
nor our galaxy. We’re ordinary.

Perhaps that’s the point of a mammoth universe.
What if the Creator wasn’t simply showing off
to awe us with immense power?
What if the Creator is an extravagant Creator,
as in the parable of a farmer who slings seeds everywhere,
filled with joy in creating and hope in harvest?

And wouldn’t it be just like God
to show his extravagant grace
by creating life throughout
the vastness of the universe?
For if creation is an unimaginably grand colossus,
so might be the scale of lavish mercy.

Bryant Burroughs writes stories and poems as reminders of those things he hopes are real and true. He and his wife, Ruth, live in Upstate South Carolina with their three cats.