Dedicated to Pastor and Mrs. Tom Bish who are both battling cancer

“Come on, come on!” he said, his gray hair wisping wildly in the evening air as he motioned for me to follow him down the corridor.

It was a strange combination to behold – the superior intelligence of a life-long student – and now doctor – in astronomy, coupled with the wonder of a child going to the candy store. I followed the “Meister” as he quickly maneuvered through doors and up and down staircases…

“I have saved the best for last,” he said.

I already had been given a most extraordinary tour of this observatory, if it could be called that. It was filled with room after room of meticulous décor and museum-like perfection. In one room we studied exquisite, astronomical maps. In another we poured over the books of the fathers of astronomy. He had a room – more like a hall, it was huge! – containing a scaled-down version of the solar system – not only were the planets painstakingly perfect in their relevance one to another – but they were mechanical – mimicking the paths of the planets around the sun. It was an amazing place!

He had extraordinary rooms that he called galaxy rooms. While they were not mechanical like the solar system room, they rivaled the fantastic feat. Tens of thousands of stars were suspended in these open air halls. We had poked our heads into the “Andromeda galaxy room”. As I stepped in and beheld the hall filled with little model stars undetectably suspended in space – I caught my breath. It was amazing.

And then he shut out the lights.

It was the most glorious thing I had ever seen. While one is aware of the existence of Andromeda and one may give glory to God as its Creator, this was the starkest sign of the intricacy and majesty of a God-Creator that I had ever seen.

We flew down the hall and the “Meister” stopped in front of a big wooden door. “Abraham” was carved into the door.

“Who is Abr…?” I started to ask.

He held up his hand. It was as if he would burst with excitement. He took a deep breath. “These are my telescope rooms. I have been collecting telescopes for years. They are all named. And this is Abraham…”

And he flung wide open the door.

The room had its own personality distinct from the other telescope rooms, as I would soon find out. The décor. The setup. The lighting. The color scheme. Each room was unique.

And there, raised up on a platform, was a huge telescope extending to the windowed ceiling.

“This telescope is one of my oldest. It is bulky, but it is very dear to me. Come look through its lens.”

I stepped up and peered into the night sky. The expression, “Oh. My. Lord.” came to my mind and although I refrained from verbalizing the phrase, the “Meister” seemed to read my thoughts –

“Yes, yes!” he said excitedly. “Give God the glory! Is it not an amazing reminder of his majesty!”

I had never had the experience of falling prostrate but I started trembling slightly as I peered through that telescope at the Milky Way.

“There are so many…” my voice trailed off.

“And that is just one of billions of galaxies, each one containing millions of stars! Yes, Abraham is one of my favorite telescopes.”

I had been out under the night sky many times and wondered at the thousands of stars that were visible with the naked eye, but this was another level. I could have gazed for hours. It was incredible.

Finally, the “Meister” gently nudged me out of my trance as he said softly, “Come, let me show you a couple more…”

I stepped down from the platform and we headed toward the wooden door. I shut it behind me and we continued down the corridor.

As we walked, the “Meister” explained:

“The telescopes don’t create the heavens. The telescopes don’t influence or change what is in space. They simply are a medium to magnify what is actually reality. They are the vehicle by which we can try to grasp the majesty and power of God and His creation.”

“They are just telescopes – glass, plastic casing, mirrors – just average materials – but when they are trained on something like the Milky Way – wow – they become priceless!”

“It is amazing” I thought to myself, “that these comparatively small devices revealed such glory.” I noticed as we walked that we passed several rooms and each one had a name carved into its door. Many I recognized as Bible names like Peter and James and David, but there were others like Adoniram and Hudson and Jim and Nate.

“So what’s the deal with the names?” I asked as he opened the door to a room with “Paul” inscribed in the door.

“Oh, it’s just a habit. I have no children. These telescopes are like my children.”

“Look at this one,” as he extended his hand toward a much less bulky and much more streamlined telescope than Abraham. I peered through this one and there was one spherical planet on which is was trained.

“Is that Mercury?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “and if the planets were scaled down – even earth with her Himalayan mountains – they would all be smoother than billiard balls. That is how precisely and geometrically perfect they were created.”

“Come on, let me show you one last room,” he again broke me out of my gaze.

We continued our journey down the corridor and stopped in front of a room that seemed to have a brand new door on it. It didn’t have a name, but it had a Bible verse etched into it instead – “Psalm 34:3”

The former door was still leaning against the hallway wall.

“I just had this door replaced,” he commented as he pushed open the Psalm 34:3 door.

This room was different than the other rooms in that there were two telescopes contained it it. The one telescope looked like it had been entrenched there for a while, but the other appeared to have been recently brought in. The décor wasn’t completely finished yet. The “Meister” seemed to read the question I was pondering and answered…

“The one telescope I have had for a few years trained on this constellation,” he said, “but this other one I just recently moved in here and trained it on the same constellation.”

I was looking through the second telescope, numbed by the heavens declaring the glory of God by the time I asked the question,

“So, remind me – what does Psalm 34:3 say anyway?”

“O magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together.”

“Fantastic,” understanding now the correlation between the verse and the telescopes.  “They magnify the same constellation.”

“Exactly,” the “Meister” said in satisfaction. He allowed me to gaze through both telescopes for several minutes that were focused on the Zodiac’s “crab” constellation. It’s Latin name escaped me.

“You ready?” he asked. I slowly stepped away and headed towards the doorway; he hesitated, looking back at the telescopes.

“So, those two – do they have names, or what?” I asked as I walked through the doorway.

Even as the question was escaping my lips, I subconsciously was reading the name on the old door that was leaning against the hall wall.

“T – o – m,” I squinted.

“Yes, they surely do,” he said fondly. “I call the one that’s been here for a while Tom and the one we just moved in here Trina.”

“Magnifying and exalting the Lord…”

“…Together.”